Backrooms: The Film Forces You To Ask Yourself, "What Exactly Is This Place?"

Backrooms Synopsis:

When a mysterious doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom, a therapist ventures into the Backrooms, a logic-defying, infinite labyrinth, to find her missing patient. The yellow-walled dimension is a sentient entity that remembers the real world, distorting reality into a series of unsettling liminal spaces. To survive, she must navigate the shifting architecture and evade the lethal, spindly entities that stalk the humming, fluorescent hallways.

Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi

Release Date: In theaters May 29th, 2026

Backrooms Fun Facts: Every Inch Of The Set Was Covered In Sickly-Yellow Wallpaper To Ensure The Audience Feels The Same Claustrophobia As The Characters

A Record-Breaking Director:
At just 19, Kane Parsons, the creative mind behind the popular YouTube channel Kane Pixels, has officially made history as the youngest director ever hired by the prestigious film studio A24. Kane’s journey didn't start in a film school; it started in his bedroom. His rise to fame began with a short film titled "The Backrooms (Found Footage)," which took the internet by storm. The video tapped into a specific kind of internet horror that resonated globally, eventually exploding to over 100 million views. A24 noticed the talent behind the screen early on and reached out to him when he was only 17, waiting for him to finish high school before diving into the professional film world. Most directors don't get their big break with a major studio until their late 20s or 30s. By starting at 19, Kane is nearly a decade ahead of the industry standard.

Filming Under a Secret Identity:
To protect the mystery of the movie, the production team chose a low-profile location and moved the entire production to Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver is a favorite for filmmakers because its diverse landscape can double for almost any city in the world, and it offers more privacy. The project was filmed under the working title "Effigy"; this allowed the crew to move through the city without drawing massive crowds of fans hoping to get a glimpse of the set. The Backrooms are famous for their endless, eerie yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lights; these sets were built inside highly secured soundstages. Security was so tight that no unauthorized photos of these iconic rooms leaked to the public during the entire two-month shoot.

Building a Real-Life Nightmare:
Kane uses a powerful 3D design program called Blender, with which he digitally built the eerie, yellow hallways that millions of people watched on his viral YouTube series. However, for the A24 feature film, the team decided to step out of the digital world and into reality. The crew constructed a maze of endless hallways that mimic the infinite look of the original videos. The practical sets help the production capture the authentic hum of fluorescent lights and the strange shadows that a computer simply can't perfectly replicate. Every inch of the set was covered in that signature, sickly-yellow wallpaper to ensure the audience feels the same claustrophobia as the characters. When an actor is physically surrounded by miles of empty yellow walls, their sense of fear and loneliness become a natural reaction to their environment. This makes the performances feel much more grounded and terrifying.

A New Kind of Collaboration:
The music for the film is a one-of-a-kind collaboration between Edo Van Breemen, a professional film composer, and Kane Parsons, the creator who started it all. Edo Van Breemen brings the experience of scoring major films, ensuring the music feels big and high-quality for a theater. Kane actually produced a lot of the music for his original YouTube shorts himself, so his hands-on involvement ensures the film stays true to the liminal vibe that his millions of fans expect. In the movie Backrooms, where most of the setting is just empty yellow hallways, the sound has to do the heavy lifting. By using industrial hums and distorted synths, the filmmakers are making sure that the audience never feels safe, even in an empty room.

The Cast Swap:
At first, the studio was in deep negotiations with Cristin Milioti, and despite being a fan favorite for the role, the deal ultimately fell through, and Reinsve was cast to take over the lead. Renate Reinsve is a breakout star; she gained international superstardom for her role in the Oscar-nominated film The Worst Person in the World (2021). Just recently she was nominated for best actress in the Academy Awards for her role in Sentimental Value (2025). Casting Reinsve in the Backrooms brings a very different energy to the film; she is known for her ability to play characters who are deeply emotional and raw, which fits perfectly with a movie about being lost in an endless, lonely dimension.

Source: youtube, wikipedia

Backrooms Review: The Film Forces You To Ask Yourself A Big Question: What Exactly Is This Place?

The internet's scariest urban legend has officially made the leap to movie theaters, and the hype is completely real. The movie, called The Backrooms, is directed by Kane Parsons, a 20-year-old filmmaker who originally became a viral internet sensation by making short videos about the concept on YouTube. It is being distributed by A24, the famous indie film studio behind massive hits like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Hereditary.

The original concept was incredibly simple: it described an endless, maze-like labyrinth of empty, yellow office rooms with buzzing fluorescent lights, where people could accidentally get trapped forever in the Backrooms. The original idea was short and simple; however, Parsons took that basic internet concept and stretched it into a deeply unsettling, feature-length psychological horror that keeps viewers on the edge of their seats.

The story follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who used to be an architect, but after his career failed, his life spiraled out of control. Now struggling with alcoholism, he works as the manager of a discount furniture store. Clark is completely broken, he is separated from his wife, and things have gotten so bad that he actually sleep inside the staged bedroom displays in the store. To cope with his overwhelming loneliness and mental problems, Clark starts seeing Mary (Renate Reinsve). Mary is a gentle therapist who carries a profound sadness of her own, still dealing with the trauma from her childhood.

One day when Clark is exploring the store's basement, he discovers a strange supernatural glow in one of the walls, a spot where the solid barrier seems to just melt away. Curious, he steps through it and falls into a place called the Backrooms. This isn't just a hidden room; it is an infinite, mind-bending maze of completely empty office spaces. There are no windows, just endless walls covered in yellow wallpaper and the irritating, constant buzz of fluorescent lights. The layout makes absolutely no sense, defying the laws of physics and normal architecture.

Desperate to prove to a skeptical Mary that he hasn’t completely lost his mind or suffered a breakdown, he starts venturing deeper and deeper into the maze to gather proof. Before long, Mary gets pulled into the mystery alongside him. She follows him down the rabbit hole, and the trap snaps shut. Both of them find themselves completely lost in a surreal nightmare where different realities begin to blur together, the exit is nowhere to be found, and they quickly realize they are definitely not alone in the Backrooms.

The visuals in the Backrooms are absolutely mesmerizing, thanks to a seamless collaboration between production designer Danny Vermette and director Kane Parsons. Vermette built massive, real-life physical sets for the actors to walk through, while Parsons used Blender, a popular, free 3D computer animation software to create the digital special effects. By blending real backgrounds with computer graphics, they made the environment feel incredibly lifelike and terrifying.

The film perfectly captures a very specific, unsettling, suffocating atmosphere. The lighting is sickly and yellow, and as the characters wander deeper into the maze, the building begins to morph and twist into impossible shapes. Infinite hallways lead to nowhere, walls warp at strange angles, and the audience feels the same claustrophobia and sense of fear as the characters trapped in these never-ending yellow walls of empty space.

The performances by the two lead actors, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, are what truly hold the entire movie together and keep you hooked from start to finish. Ejiofor plays Clark with a deep sense of desperation. You can feel his panic and exhaustion in every scene as he struggles to hold onto his sanity. On the other side, Reinsve plays Mary with an incredible vulnerability. She brings a soft, human touch to the madness, acting as the anchor for the audience as everything else spirals out of control.

Without these two powerhouse performances, the Backrooms could have easily felt like a hollow, yellow, empty space. Because the environment around them is constantly shifting, warping, and turning into an impossible, dreamlike landscape, it would be easy for the audience to stop caring or get detached from what is happening. Instead, Ejiofor and Reinsve give the Backrooms real, human stakes, and they make you care deeply about their survival. No matter how weird, surreal, or confusing the endless maze becomes, the raw emotion on their faces keeps the story grounded in reality. You aren't just watching a mind-bending special effects show; you are watching two real, broken people fighting for their lives.

When the movie shifts from creepy to flat-out terrifying, it is the sound design that does most of the heavy lifting. Instead of relying on cheap jump scares, the filmmakers use audio to build unbearable tension. For most of the film, the characters are surrounded by the low, mechanical hum of the fluorescent lights. But when danger approaches, that background noise suddenly cuts out. It is replaced by a sickening, rhythmic thump-thump-thump echoing through the hallways which signals the arrival of the entity that inhabits the Backrooms.

Instead of creating the creature entirely with computer graphics, the filmmakers hired actor Robert Bobroczkyi to play the monster in person. Bobroczkyi is a former basketball player who stands an incredible 7 feet 7 inches tall, with an exceptionally lean physical build and long limbs. His massive height and unique proportions give the monster a freakish, towering presence on screen. Because he is a real person moving in a highly unusual way, you get a deeply unsettling feeling when something looks almost human but is just altered enough to trigger an automatic response that tells our brains something is deeply wrong. The way he moves, combined with those heavy, echoing sounds, creates a nightmare that feels terrifyingly real and impossible to look away from.

The movie does something brilliant by using the Backrooms as a physical representation of what it actually feels like to have a mental breakdown. The endless, empty hallways aren't just there to look creepy; they reflect the internal emptiness, confusion, and isolation that the characters are dealing with inside their own heads. This sets up a fascinating mystery that keeps the audience guessing. The film forces you to ask yourself a big question: What exactly is this place?

On one hand, the Backrooms could be a terrifying tear in the fabric of the universe where the laws of nature and physics simply broke down, trapping two innocent people by pure, bad luck.

On the other hand, the movie drops plenty of clues suggesting the hallways might be a metaphorical prison. It is highly possible that the entire labyrinth is constructed entirely out of Clark and Mary’s own broken memories, regrets, and personal failures. Because both characters are running away from deep emotional trauma in the real world, the maze acts as a giant mirror. It forces them to literally wander through the dark, empty spaces of their own minds, turning their deepest psychological pain into a physical trap they cannot escape.

The Backrooms is an absolutely incredible achievement, especially when you realize it is the very first full-length movie this director has ever made. At just 20 years old, Kane Parsons has pulled off something truly special. He took a simple internet horror story and successfully transformed it into a cinematic nightmare. He proved that internet culture can be taken seriously on the big screen, creating an experience that feels deeply artistic, mature, and genuinely terrifying.