The most confounding detail of Backrooms (2026) is not any of the eerie lore or surreal visuals that harken back to Salvador Dali and M.C. Escher. It’s not the score that burrows under the viewer’s skin and never leaves. More than any accomplishment seen on the screen, the one that remains is a question of how its director, Kane Parson, is so capable of creating a powerful study of malaise and regret. At just 20, he understands the depth of the changing American institutions, transitioning from analog to digital and, in the process, leaving many uncertain of what their future will hold. This is a story where an empty hallway takes the place of the void, disorienting all who think to look into its putrid, windowless surface. What happens when you realize nothing is there? Do you give up, or do you attempt to find a deeper meaning?
That is definitely true of protagonist Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor): a manager at a mattress store regularly vandalized with graffiti reading “rip-off” while business hours are closer to a ghost town. From the sound of it, he has basically become one with his job thanks to a recent argument that kicked him out of his house. At every turn, he uses his agency to try to justify his pity. Despite his tough exterior, it’s clear that inside he’s withering, doing C-tier commercials with mediocre props. The overhead lighting doesn’t work, and any exterior shot paints the world as a cartoonish, colorful utopia.
There is no need to fear the backrooms because his life is a walking nightmare. As an irritable alcoholic, he resorts to therapy sessions to try and understand what went wrong. He wanted to be an architect, changing the world with grand architecture that brought people together. Instead, he’s in the valley, paying his way through a loveless marriage that has taken a toll. No amount of talking it out with his therapist, Mary (Renate Rensve), creates the closure he needs to move forward. He is stuck in a loop, forever attempting to achieve a dream that’s moving further away, if it was even within reach to begin with.
That is exactly why the backrooms appeal to Clark. What first appears as a maze of putrid-colored walls and floors filled with furniture and debris slowly turns into his own project. He can mold the landscape of endless hallways and impractical doorways into dazzling optical wonders that are all his own. It doesn’t matter that everything lacks personality or even a sense of connection to the outside world. It’s enough for Clark to believe that he’s in the basement of a building, as impractical as it sounds, that was torn down decades ago. It should be noted that there’s no explanation for how or where the backrooms came from, but this alibi is enough to warrant an expedition that evolves into a cocoon of delirium.
Another reason to question how Parson landed on such an effective presentation is in the world he creates around the more famous images pulled from online forums. At 20-years-old, he grew up in an era where “terminally online” lost its pejorative undertones. His connection to the 1990s is, at best, through an intangible prism, introducing him to a world he’s never known directly. And yet, his ability to revel in analog defies contemporary trends of either mocking or putting too much reverence on the flimsy tech. Does it have its problems? Sure. But there is a sense of curiosity with embracing a VHS tape or late-night local ads. He wants to understand this world to a level that goes beyond tassels. He basically wants to know about a more symbolic world in decay.
The best example of this comes in the opening scene, where an unnamed individual enters the backrooms with a camera. Presented in first-person POV, the introduction to this world is done through heavy breathing and flickering lights. It’s essentially a found footage long take that feels as ancient and disoriented as the sights it discovers. There’s also something about the physical documentation that makes it all feel more immersive, as if Parson will treat this incident as buried treasure for later. It’s something that could be done later with digital photography, but the selective ways in which lost media in 1990 was created feel a bit more haunting, if just because misuse of the remnants could cause greater irrelevance to form.
At the same time as Clark’s downward spiral, Mary is reflecting on her own past and, most notably, her complicated relationship with her mother. Her introduction is a flashback where she watches her house getting demolished, again depicting the removal of the past to make way for something new. Without that tangible connection, what good is a memory? The human mind may be capable of great innovations, but it’s incapable of not having a few cognitive shortcomings now and then. Backrooms is all about the fear of moving forward when the past is slipping away. Even Mary’s attempts to cope by writing a self-help book appear more as tragic irony than relief. Like the backrooms, nobody has an answer. They are, at best, doomed to their lifelong mundanity. Even in the real world, they may not be able to see outside themselves.
Ambiguity ends up being the greatest strength for Backrooms as a story. Audiences have complained that the ending makes no sense, though keen observers may be quick to notice that concepts are there that give the final images meaning. Nobody knows where it came from or what its psychological hold on anyone who enters is, yet there’s a clear gradual change that overwhelms. To paraphrase Clark, the more that you focus on a memory, the less you remember. It’s not just in the pathway back to complacent safety. Sometimes it’s a way to oneself and the ability to not become overwhelmed by the claustrophobic structure. For most of the running time, Backrooms is concerned only with survival and sanity. The monsters are sprinkled throughout with Parson delivering a wrecking ball of a finale that pushes surrealism somewhere between The Shining (1980) and Inception (2010). Are the backrooms real, or some greater hallucination?
A lot can be made about the construction of this film and whether it’s truly the introduction of a new generational talent. Given Parson’s long-term involvement with The Backrooms lore, it’s easy to understand why he’s so comfortable in this landscape. Whereas most would probably add too much or fail to live up to horrifying mundanity, the ability to slowly escalate the drama while digging further into its psychological confines reflects a filmmaker passionate enough to challenge the narrative and technical abilities of his craft. What flaws there are, notably in the shaggy dialogue that sounds a bit too teenage speak, can be forgiven when the results promise a greater study not for why the backrooms are scary, but why our greatest fear is inside ourselves.
It also makes sense that Parson is keen on this story given the nature of post-pandemic life. Having spent 2020 (assumingly) indoors, he is used to the never-ending uncertainty of life. He watched as industries faded due to economic downturn, while others have long settled as abandoned lots full of their own haunted folklore. The American industry has become a horrifying mess, and pushing into the digital landscape helps to remove the human elements. It comes to the point where the mistakes become forgivable, where the crackle of a VHS tape becomes a holy grail. This film is released at a time when the world doesn’t feel real, and the economic downturn has only worsened since March. What is the future of America?
Like Clark, all it can really do is move forward and attempt to create new truths out of the remains, the skeletal structures of abandoned malls gone corporate. The joy inside can only be seen as presumptive, with the dream of hard work no longer being able to sustain the illusion of guaranteed success. It’s doubtful that Clark had the work ethic, but he definitely carries the weariness of burnout and too many failures. Parson depicts a world he never knew, making the period details ominous in their waning days of usefulness. Soon the camcorder will go the way of Mary’s home and, presumably, Clark’s job. Everything is collapsing, doomed to become an invisible aura that nobody can properly recall.
That is why Backrooms is more than simple terror. For as much as it can be accused of replaying the same trauma tropes found in many genre films, it attempts to apply that logic to a more universal lore. It’s interacting with an immediate past that’s growing irrelevant in order to understand what’s to come. In a time when everything is in constant flux, where attention spans are shortened, and computers can form false memories, what value is there in analog? What once seemed insignificant has regained value, though is that a good thing? Has this whole experience been a useless recognition of human innovation? Have we reached a breaking point? It’s hard to say if the world is changing too much and what should stay the same. Even so, when it fails to recognize humanity, it becomes a horrifying place full of windowless hallways. The outside world no longer matters. As a generation-defining statement, it’s a powerful call to do better before things get worse.
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