featuring @a24 @kanepixels @renatereinsve
Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, A24’s chilling new psychological horror, transforms the viral internet sensation into a feature-length descent into dread. At just 20 years old, Parsons makes his feature debut with a film that expands his acclaimed YouTube shorts into a mesmerizing, yellow-drenched nightmare. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as a furniture store owner who stumbles through a portal into infinite liminal corridors and Renate Reinsve as the therapist determined to find him, the movie excels at evoking that profound sense of wrongness familiar to anyone who’s ever wandered an empty office building after hours.
The concept originates from a simple 4chan image of monotonous yellow rooms with buzzing fluorescents, which Parsons elevated into a full mythology through his found-footage web series. This big-screen adaptation wisely preserves the analog horror aesthetic while scaling it up with impressive production design. Endless mazes of damp carpet, illogical architecture, murky pools, and disorienting vastness create an immersive world that feels profoundly alien.
Where Backrooms truly shines is in its atmosphere. Parsons crafts a hypnotic sense of isolation and unease that builds through long, methodical takes and oppressive silence. The horror is most effective in its restraint—brief, distant glimpses of something unnatural, the low hum of lights, and the disquieting geometry of the space deliver pure psychological tension.
As a first-time director, Parsons demonstrates remarkable technical proficiency and visual confidence. Collaborating with strong producers like James Wan and Osgood Perkins, he turns what could have been a gimmicky internet adaptation into something cinematic and ambitious. The optical illusions and shifting environments are frequently bewitching, making the Backrooms themselves the film’s most compelling “character.”
Unfortunately, for myself personally the human story struggles to match the world’s eerie power. The relationship between Ejiofor’s lost man and Reinsve’s therapist never fully clicks, feeling underbaked and secondary. Whenever the film shifts focus from the mysterious environment to explicit plot or character drama, momentum drains and the tension dissipates.
Ejiofor and Reinsve deliver committed performances that ground the surreal proceedings, bringing emotional weight to characters grappling with memory, reality, and isolation. Their work helps humanize the abstract concept, even when the script doesn’t give them enough depth to fully shine.
Backrooms remains a highly promising debut that captures the fascination of liminal horror while pointing toward an exciting future for Parsons. Despite narrative shortcomings, its mesmerizing atmosphere and inventive world-building make it a must-see for fans of thoughtful, unsettling genre fare. A24 has another standout creepfest on its hands, and this unsettling maze is well worth getting lost in.
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