Backrooms Builds Creepy Tension in Empty Spaces

Backrooms

★ ★ ★ ½

Backrooms is the long-awaited film from YouTube creator Kane Parsons, who created a worldwide phenomenon with the series on the platform. He was 14 years old when he dabbled in Blender, a 3D animation program, for a school project. That project led to a short film called The Facility, and eventually to The Backrooms, which inspired countless YouTube copycats.

The backdrop of the series, and this film, is an intriguing use of “liminal spaces,” which are transitional places, either physical or psychological, that exist between two worlds.

Renate Reinsve as Mary
© 2026 A24

The transitional place in Backrooms is a yellow-hued office setting, mostly vacant and eerily quiet. One room leads to a hallway, which leads to another room, and so on. There are different floors where reality breaks down further. Furniture, windows and doors are embedded halfway into the flooring. Piles of furniture and junk sit in the middle of rooms. Strange objects, out of place anywhere else, are right at home here. According to the series, many people have found the Backrooms, but few find a way out.

There are also strange creatures in the Backrooms, some extremely dangerous, others just creepy.

The plot is simple and incredibly well executed. Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) owns a failing furniture store and is going through a painful divorce. He tries to uncover where he went wrong in his marriage with his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve). His two employees, Bobby (Finn Bennett) and Kat (Lukita Maxwell), try to help him by creating television commercials that are amateurishly awful, yet somehow fitting for a store called Ottoman Empire.

Lukita Maxwell as Kat and Finn Bennett as Bobby
© 2026 A24

Clark sees Mary on a regular basis. He’s a man of anguish, trying to grasp what triggers angry outbursts, during which he says mean things to his wife. Mary seems to be the kind of therapist who genuinely cares about Clark and wants to see him get over his troubles. She probably can’t save the marriage, but she can help Clark become a better person as he goes through the breakup.

Clark accidentally finds a doorway-size slit in one of the store walls with a sliver of light coming through from the other side. Clark investigates further and discovers that a small area of the wall is actually a portal where he can walk right through the wall and into the creepy Backrooms office space. He goes through, explores and later tries to convince Mary it’s real.

Renate Reinsve as Mary
© 2026 A24

When Clark misses a few appointments, Mary does a wellness check at the store. She discovers the front door unlocked and finds Clark’s portal because it’s taped off with a painter’s tape frame to clearly mark the entrance.

What works really well with this film is that you don’t need to have watched Parsons’ series on YouTube to get caught up on the phenomenon. The film does a great job of acclimating you to the world right away.

It’s creepy, mysterious and filled with tension. Parsons’ instincts are dead-on. He doesn’t reveal too much, just what we really need to know. The rest, we’re left to figure out for ourselves. Done poorly, it’s lazy filmmaking. Done right, as it is here, it’s masterful storytelling.

Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark
© 2026 A24

Both Ejiofor and Reinsve deliver compelling performances. Their characters feel real, viscerally human and painfully tragic. It’s their strong performances that elevate the film beyond the YouTube series.

The ending feels rushed at times, likely because the monsters could have used a touch more setup before they become central to the stakes. Parsons keeps them as secretive as what the Backrooms actually are. As an audience, we need to understand the stakes as our protagonists go up against a dangerous entity.

It’s a film that won’t scare you out of your seat, but builds fantastic tension as the story unfolds. This isn’t an inherently scary film, but it is creepy and captivating. During the film, I hoped I wouldn’t find myself trapped in the Backrooms’ liminal space, and if I did, it was after I refilled my popcorn.