Backrooms is a science-fiction horror film directed by Kane Parsons, based on the viral internet horror phenomenon known as The Backrooms. The film was released by A24 and marks Parsons’ feature directorial debut. At just 20 years old, he became the youngest feature-film director in A24’s history.
The story revolves around furniture store owner Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who discovers a strange doorway in the basement of his showroom and inadvertently enters the Backrooms, a dimension composed of endless liminal spaces where the laws of reality cease to function. His therapist, Dr Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), follows him into this impossible labyrinth, transforming what begins as a mystery into a deeply personal rescue mission. While Mary provides the narrative anchor, it is Clark’s disorientation, fear and gradual psychological unravelling that give the film its emotional weight. For him, the journey is not merely an adventure through an alternate reality but a confrontation with the very nature of memory, identity and existence.
One of the film’s most intriguing qualities is the unexpected resemblance it shares with Nathan Fielder’s series The Rehearsal. At first glance, the comparison seems unlikely. One is a horror film about an impossible dimension; the other, a darkly comic exploration of human behaviour through meticulously constructed simulations. Yet both are fascinated by artificial spaces that become psychologically more powerful than reality itself.
Much like the painstaking replica apartments, classrooms and bars that populate The Rehearsal, the Backrooms are uncanny copies of familiar environments. They feel recognisable but subtly wrong, as though reality has been reconstructed from memory by an imperfect architect. The effect is deeply unsettling. The endless offices, corridors and waiting rooms evoke the same liminal sensation found in Fielder’s recreated worlds, spaces that appear ordinary on the surface yet generate a profound sense of emotional and existential unease.
At one level, Backrooms can be read as a study of the unconscious mind. The labyrinth begins to resemble a vast psychological archive, filled with interconnected chambers that preserve fragments of forgotten experiences. Each room feels like a replica of a memory whose original source can no longer be identified. As Clark wanders deeper into the maze, the Backrooms increasingly resemble the architecture of the human psyche itself, a network of hidden spaces where recollections, fears and unresolved emotions remain suspended beyond conscious reach.
This is what ultimately distinguishes Backrooms from conventional horror cinema. The film does not rely on a creature to generate fear. Instead, the environment becomes the monster. Parsons understands that an empty room can be more terrifying than any apparition when it feels loaded with forgotten meaning. The result is a form of new-age atmospheric horror that transforms the familiar into something profoundly alien, suggesting that the scariest place imaginable may not be another dimension at all, but the unexplored corridors of our own minds.
What makes the film so effective is its refusal to over-explain. There are mysteries here, certainly, but Backrooms is less interested in mythology than in atmosphere. The film often feels like a waking dream where logic is suspended and intuition becomes the only guide. Long stretches unfold in near silence, broken only by the hum of fluorescent lights or the distant echo of footsteps. The result is a pervasive feeling of unease that lingers long after the credits roll.
Visually, the film is extraordinary. Director Parsons first gained recognition through his self-produced YouTube shorts, created largely using digital tools such as Blender and After Effects. Here, armed with a significantly larger canvas, he expands those ideas without losing their uncanny charm. The physical sets, reportedly spanning more than 30,000 square feet, become characters in their own right. Their repetitive geometry, muted colours and endless configurations create the sensation of being trapped inside a puzzle that was never meant to be solved.
New age horror fans, who have grown up on gaming culture, found-footage shorts, and digital effect will surely take to the film, while those catering to classic old-school virtues of horror will have to adjust their worldview to enjoy this brand of entertainment.
ALso Read: What Is Backrooms? The Internet Horror Sensation Is Coming to Indian Cinemas This May
