“Backrooms” (2026) has been one of the most popular horror films of the year, grossing around $402.5 million at the global box office and collecting several nominations across both the Astra Midseason Movie Awards and the Critics Choice Super Awards.
Following this impressive success, director Kane Parsons has signed with A24 to direct a sequel, as announced earlier this September.
The movie primarily follows Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, an architect who owns a furniture store, and his therapist, Mary Kline, played by Renate Reinsve. Upon investigating a power outage, Clark discovers an uncanny maze of yellow-wallpapered rooms with fluorescent lights and warped furniture in the basement of his store.
Fascinated by its eerie expansion, he explores it with the help of his assistant manager, Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend (Finn Bennett). The film follows the group as they go on to discover its incomprehensible horrors before having a climactic confrontation with a mysterious, unseen character.
Some time passes before Mary Kline receives a message from Clark, ultimately motivating her to venture into the backrooms herself to search for him.
The strength of “Backrooms” lies in its worldbuilding. There is a clear contrast between the blue skies and bright sunlight of the outside world and the dark, unsettling hallways of the backrooms. Both longtime enthusiasts of the Roblox horror games and 4chan origins, as well as new horror audiences can appreciate the attention paid to creating the atmosphere.
Kane Parsons originally was the creator of a YouTube series based on the concept of the Backrooms, which followed a research group known as ‘Async’ that aimed to explore and utilize the Backrooms. Anyone who watched this series can spot the lore easter eggs throughout the movie, such as the scientist character, Phil, played by Mark Duplass.
However, even longtime fans of Parsons’ series find the inclusion of ‘Async’ to be a disjointed side-plot from the main characters’ story, only brought in to open up the ending to a sequel.
Some critiques of this film share the sentiment that it raises more loose ends than it addresses. Though it is true that many elements of the film are very much subject to interpretation, isn’t that kind of the point?
“Backrooms” excels at creating the uncanny effect. Perhaps the plot loses some viewers in pursuit of this homage to the original concept, but it is by no means incomplete or directionless.
In balancing the variety of audiences Parsons is directing the film for, perhaps criticism also comes from our prior conceptions of what the backrooms are supposed to look like according to our specific corners of the internet.
But regardless of whether you will be viewing this film for the first time on streaming or are rewatching it to prepare for the sequel, try to situate yourself comfortably in the expanse of the film’s unexplainability — or at least, as comfortable as a film about the backrooms can be.
This article was edited by Vaughan Noble, Jessica Ackerman and Gabrielle McNamee. Copy editing by Avery Grossman, Mattie Lupo, Ryan Sieve and Nicole Kariuki.
