BACKROOMS. In order to talk about Backrooms (2026), A24’s newest psychological horror directed by breakout filmmaker Kane Parsons and based off his cult YouTube series, it is important to take a few steps back to look at the veryinternet-based origins of this film’s unsettling landscape. The film’s endless mono-yellow passages and torturous fluorescent light invoking a Tetris-ed office space bereft of human life did not arise purely from the mind of Parsons, but rather from the real-life eeriness of the personality-starved spaces and empty transitional periods created by modern architecture.
Have you ever taken a red-eye flight and wandered aimlessly through the cache of blue tile and meaningless wall-hangings waiting to see another soul? Have you ever opened a door expecting to find an exit but instead found a space that appears to have no functional designation other than to account for some mistake in the math of the design? Have you ever been inside a furniture store? The internet would call these “liminal spaces,” and they are the subject of much fascination among late-Millennial and Gen Z users. Their disturbing nature has created much conversation, leading in 2019 with the coining of the term “backrooms” in a post on the now defunct and deeply problematic forum website 4Chan. The post features an image of the iconic yellow office space seeming to advance into nowhere accompanying a piece of micro fiction describing the maddening nature of the location and alluding to dangerous creatures within it. This coincides with a growing fascination with the corruption or haunting of analog technology, or the use of these devices to create a story in which they distort the environment itself. Drawing upon common tropes found in Japanese horror and the found-footage genre, analog horror is an internet-founded frontier of scares that is only expanding.
Four years ago, Parsons’ YouTube account Kane Pixels uploaded a nine-minute video titled “The Backrooms (Found Footage),” a piece of analog horror media from which a throughline paved with talent and creativity can be drawn to the A24 film. The then 16-year-old Parsons developed the original source material into something expansive and confounding. Diverging from a traditional narrative, this series ranges from fear-fueled flash fiction to sequences reminiscent of documentary and infomercial media. Combining animation and handheld camera effects, Parsons creates a surreal and life-like replica of this imaginary space complete with menacing ossified creatures and mysterious hazmat figures. Even before studying film in high school at Marin School of the Arts in Northern California and his video release, Parsons was an animator and musician with a variety of projects attached to his name. By the time he was 17, his “The Backrooms” series had gained so much popularity that he was signing with A24 to create a feature film.
Now Backrooms is here, offering much of the same analog horror thrill as well as uncharted innovation. It is the story of a recently divorced man’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) descent into the backrooms and his grieving therapist’s (Renata Reinsve) revelations about what the disturbing landscape means. This story departs from the series in its conventional narrative structure, which explores themes of trauma and the nature of psychological patterns. Ejiofor and Reinsve deliver believable performances charged with the strained and explosive emotions that ultimately lead to their respective conclusions. Additionally, the film’s use of handheld camera work and traditional cinematography tell a story that is both accessible and reminiscent of the source material. The set design and animation are a well-earned feat, exhibiting Parsons’ mastery over his concept and production designer Danny Vermette’s interpretation of this concept as we are guided through a labyrinth of uncanny clutter and horrifying emptiness. These images are set to an upsetting score created by Parsons and Edo Van Breeman. The eerie tracks are reminders of an unrecognizable world.
While the acting and technical features shine like a fluorescent light, there were multiple moments where I found myself recoiling at the way the script treated the source material, often over-explaining the qualities of the backrooms or employing impotent devices. As Ejiofor’s Clark, an alcoholic furniture store owner, tells his therapist how the backrooms work, Mary serves as a proxy for the confused audience members unfamiliar with the concept. While this serves to move the plot forward, it diminished some of the magic that happens when a horror movie reveals little about the antagonist, opting to show rather than tell. Later, Clark explains in relation to some catatonic humanoid figures in the backrooms, “They simply exist like furniture,” a decent enough simile but far less moving than the visceral visuals. Additionally, the visual language of the backrooms and the discussion of neural pathways at the film’s climax is too obvious to call insight. For all that is said and unsaid, I left desiring to know less.
Backrooms is a different piece of media than the YouTube series or the 4Chan post, so the fact that it is different in style and themes is a good thing. Rather than rehashing the same material, Parsons took a leap of faith and made something new, which is admirable. Even if you don’t like the movie much or at all, it’s undeniable that this filmmaker has nothing but time to grow stronger. If the packed theater is any indication, this is an excellent start to Parsons’ career and perhaps a sign of stories to come as a younger generation of artists gain traction in the mainstream. This could also signify the direction of horror writing in general, allowing niche genres and topics to break out of internet fame. 105M. BROADWAY, MINOR.
Sasha Senal (she/they) is a writer, environmental educator and aspiring farmer. She can be found exploring Humboldt forests (not unlike her home redwoods on the Sonoma Coast) and considering Black eco-feminism.
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This article appears in Cowbells and Crab Hands.
