Backrooms Movie Review

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]All right, you guys. What did I think of Backrooms? Hey, it's Brian. Welcome to the Awards Contender. What a month of horror this has been. Starting with Hokum on May 1st, Obsession on May 15th, Backrooms May 29th.

[00:00:16]Like this has been really exciting. This is my favorite genre and we've had three great movies in the genre this month. We end May with Backrooms, which I knew little about going in. I knew the director was like 20 years old. You have Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead roles. I never saw a trailer. I saw a few stills. I went to one of the very first screenings in my town. I wanted to check this one out because of the genre, because it's A24. There was a lot of anticipation for this movie.

[00:00:50]Apparently, it's making like 70 plus million dollars this weekend, which is absolutely crazy, I think, for a movie like this. You know, in other years, in other months, Backrooms maybe wouldn't have had a national release. It could have just been a specialized release, goes around the country to some places, and then shows up on VOD. That this movie is doing as well as it is, and now having seen it, I think that is so cool.

[00:01:17]Playing in the marketplace like a new Star Wars, a new Marvel film, or something. And this is a deeply weird film. This is not Hokum, it's not Obsession, it's something entirely different, more experimental, has some found footage aspects to it that give it a Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity kind of a feel. But there's also some beautiful cinematography, some weirdness there that brought to mind Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch. This young filmmaker, Kane Parsons, definitely has his influences. I'm sure he's watched a lot of movies. He's done his homework. Wants to emulate certain styles of filmmaking, but also wants to make something entirely of his own. And I think he's accomplished that in Backrooms. I had a great time with this film. I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know like how scary or not scary it would be. I didn't know what kind of characters the main two actors played in this. Was it going to be more of a character piece or was it just an exercise in terror? I didn't know.

[00:02:22]And so for about 80% of this movie, I will just say I thought it was absolutely astounding. It was fantastic, even better than Obsession and Hokum this month. I was like, "Damn, I am like being fed in May when it comes to horror films." I mean, to have three great ones I see in a theater in a single month. I can't believe it. Backrooms has so much to recommend about it. I mean, I'll say a little bit about the story, no spoilers here. There's not much to say.

[00:02:54]Basically, the setup is that Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark. He wanted to be an architect and things have not worked out for him. His marriage imploded. He's not in a good place in his life. He works at this low-budget furniture store that has very few people coming in and out. He just has a really low quality of life.

[00:03:15]He goes to a therapist named Mary played by Renata Reinsve who's trying to get through to him and it's not working out so well. At the furniture store one night, Clark is messing around with the lights downstairs and basically, he finds a portal that takes him into what might be another part of the superstore.

[00:03:37]It might be another dimension. It might be hell on Earth. It is this labyrinth of hallways that go in a thousand different directions, takes him into rooms where something is clearly wrong.

[00:03:50]Something is odd. Room after room makes zero sense, and then there is a fear factor in that he's hearing footsteps.

[00:04:00]Someone else is in this place. What is Clark going to do about this new discovery? How does Mary get involved?

[00:04:07]That's all I'm going to say about the plot. The surprises in Backrooms are plentiful and gave me lots of smiles, a couple big jump scares. The film is not overly scary the way Hokum was, where Hokum every 5 to 10 minutes I was screaming and jumping and stuff. This is more of a creep fest. This is more of a mood piece where you are curious to see what's around the next corner, what's at the end of that hallway and that hallway. And Kane Parsons does a really good job in this movie by not throwing too much at the viewer. He could have gone the easy route and just had one jump scare after another, most of which doesn't amount to anything. He is trying at almost every moment in Backrooms to unsettle the viewer, to put you on edge, have you wonder what the hell is going to happen next, what are they going to find next, what terrifying things are lurking in the shadows of this space.

[00:05:06]Backrooms has so much tension throughout. It really uses the space of those hallways, those odd rooms that aren't shaped right, the furniture that's like sinking into the ground, random trap doors and small confined spaces characters have to crawl through.

[00:05:25]I loved all of the time spent when nobody is talking. They are just walking, crawling through all of these hallways. I was curious to see what was going to happen next. The space reminded me of a place I used to work in in 2009 and 2010. I worked a casting job in Chatsworth, California, where my boss and I shared a small space in this huge warehouse building and at night you could get lost in this building. There were hallways that would go this way and that way. I'd be looking for a bathroom or something and I'd be like, wait, how do I get back to my office? And some of these hallways were dark, had very little lights and I was creeped out often when I was working that job for about eight to nine months and so much in backrooms brought that fear back to me. Brought those moments when it was late at night and I couldn't find my way out of the building to my car. I went the wrong direction and I'm like, wait, where am I now? Is anyone still here? I feel like everyone at some point in their lives has been in a building kind of like the one we see in backrooms.

[00:06:29]Obviously not to like the science-fictiony extent where furniture is sticking to the ground and the walls and the ceiling in ways that make no sense. Like we've never quite seen a place like this, but that fear we have had in our lives where we're in a building and can't find our way out, where we hear footsteps potentially and we're like, who's that person? Why aren't they responding to me? The true delight, the power of backrooms is not really in the character so much. It's not in telling the most fascinating story of a relationship. This is not obsession. The horror doesn't come from the character so much in backrooms. It's more about the production design, the space, learning new things every five to 10 minutes about what might be lurking in this room, in that room. The very creative and inventive visualization of the spaces in this movie I do think is Oscar-worthy. Backrooms has one chance of awards love and it's in the production design. The production design of this entire movie blew me away. Danny Vermette did the production design of backrooms and oh my freaking god. This is not something they just threw together in a few days. There was a lot of thoughts and creative ideas put into this, and what I loved is how subtle it starts. You know, there's a chair just in a random room in the background, and you're like, "Okay." And then you begin to notice as the movie goes along, as more rooms are being explored, like it's not just the furniture in the rooms, it's the shape of the rooms as well. And it's the terror of like, "Who could possibly be living here? What possible horrors are they capable of achieving?"

[00:08:12]In a weird way, the answers we eventually get near the end of Backrooms are not fully satisfying. Kane Parsons kind of writes himself into a corner in that he has to answer some questions. It can't just all be ambiguous. We would walk out of the theater like, "What the hell was that about?" But I don't know about you, as I was watching the movie getting close to the third act, I was like, "I'm not interested in knowing what this place is." Any possible explanation will only be satisfying to a certain extent, and you know, we get some of that at the end. It works okay, but it's in the mystery of the storytelling in Backrooms where the film really comes to life. In the discovery of what's going to happen next with these two main characters, Clark and Mary, who work well enough. They're not three-dimensional characters, but you have two incredible actors playing them.

[00:09:06]Parsons struck gold getting Renata Rainsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor for this project. They are never thumbing their nose at the horror of it, at the absurdity of the premise. Lots of scenes where they're just like walking down hallways and looking around corners.

[00:09:23]These are two Oscar-nominated actors.

[00:09:26]They could have thought of themselves as above this material. They did not. That was the right choice because even though the screenplay only gives them a little bit of characterization, just enough for you to learn a little bit about their past. They have an intriguing relationship, a few scenes together as therapist and patients. They have an early dialogue scene that works beautifully that gives us a ton of insight into both of the characters, actually. Renate Reinsve doesn't get a whole lot to do in the movie for a while, but if you were a fan of hers, The Worst Person in the World, I just saw her in the Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, Fjord, just a few days ago. Like over the course of 2 weeks, I got to see her wonderful performance in Fjord, very complex, very rich. And then moving to a completely different style of performance and film and backrooms, but she is bringing it in this. She does not look at backrooms as a step down, like, "Oh man, this is just a paycheck." You get the sense that she believed in her writer-director and this premise, and she slays this role. She has some terrific emotional beats, I will just say in the second half. It's a performance that's largely dialogue-free. There's lots of sections where she's not saying anything, but you notice through her reactions, in her eyes, like what has she gotten herself into. I really adored her performance in this, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, he's always reliable. Year after year, decade after decade, he has shown up in some great films going back 20, 30 years. He is such a sturdy actor, someone we can count on, someone who's always going to give 100%. He does the same thing in backrooms, and he has a couple moments that truly took my breath away. So, the performances are outstanding for a movie like this, which could have gotten lesser actors, very like one-note actors just reacting to scary things around the corner. This is so much more than that, that both Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve were even thought of for this project, that they were cast, that they gave these two phenomenal performances, I was like, damn. That is also something I loved about this movie. Now, one disappointing thing I have to say about Backrooms is that I do think it could have been a lot scarier. I think Kane Parsons could have really upped the terror factor in this movie. There was potential for greatness in that regard, where at the end of 2026, I would be calling Backrooms one of the scariest films of the year or even the decade.

[00:11:58]It's not even the scariest movie of May 2026. That was Hokum. Hokum, I thought, was terrifying, where I was almost looking away from the screen at times, knowing a scare was coming, knowing I was about to see something yet again in that movie that was going to make my skin crawl. There's some of that in Backrooms, but now having thought about the movie for close to 24 hours since I watched it, like, it's creepy, it's weird, it's unsettling, and while I watched it, I was definitely freaked out at times, but once it's all said and done, I'm like, this could have been truly scary. And it doesn't quite hit that mark. Only in two sequences, I will just say, both in the found footage formats, where we're in the point of view of someone pointing a camera down a hallway, another hallway. The movie opens like that. The very first shots of the film is very scary.

[00:12:53]And then, like, around the halfway mark, we get another sequence like that, where we are running from room to room, and we're hearing things, seeing shadows, something is coming for the main characters. The way that long scene ends with something that happens, I won't give away, but I was like, oh, damn.

[00:13:12]That was scary. And a moment with a Christmas tree, I will just say. A Christmas tree. Like, >> [laughter] >> I don't want you to think I found this film really flat in terms of its scares.

[00:13:23]It's just it did nothing for me there.

[00:13:25]It has that. I just think there was a possibility Kane Parsons could have made this terrifying. He had the production design, the set he needed, the long hallways and the weird rooms. This could have scared the out of us. So, I can't say it's one of the very best films of the year. It's not a nine, it's not a 10. I had a couple things. I thought it could have been scarier. The two main characters could have been written with a little bit more complexity, and I'm not sure the ending works very well. The final 10 minutes, I was like, I see what's happening here.

[00:13:59]I know there has to be some explanation, but that aspect of the end flounders a bit. I liked the final image, what we are left with. It has you thinking as you walk out of the theater. You're curious to know, like, what happened to a certain character. It's not cut and dry, but I do think there's a little bit too much plot happening at the end, and it takes away some of the power the film has been building on for about 80 to 90 minutes. But, overall, I had a great time in Backrooms. I was pleasantly surprised, actually. I was like, this probably won't be as good as Hokum and Obsession. Maybe it'll be like a six or a seven, just based on some stills I had seen. It's just people like wandering around hallways. This could get old very quickly, but it never does. There's a lot of creativity, inventiveness on the part of writer-director Kane Parsons, and especially that Oscar-worthy production design by Danny Vermette.

[00:14:56]Wow. Just freaking wow. If nothing else, when it comes to award season, I want this movie to get into production design. That would be oh so inspired. I give Backrooms an eight out of 10.

[00:15:13]>> [music] >> Mhm.