We saw Backrooms, the strangest film of the year

Between the fantasy film and the psychological thriller, Backrooms hypnotizes thanks to its artistic direction.Image: A24

A real phenomenon in the United States, Backrooms arrives on our screens this Wednesday. The film turns out to be as much a cinematic UFO as it is an excellent surprise.

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Prepare to embark on a journey that looks like an experimental film, featuring settings worthy of contemporary art installations. This UFO is called Backrooms and is released in Switzerland this June 17, after being a hit on the weekend of its release in the United States. The reason? The film is inspired by one of the most famous urban legends on the Internet: there exists a parallel world of endless corridors in which a mysterious presence lurks.

This mildly horrific science fiction film takes us to the early 1990s and follows a furniture dealer (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovering an entrance to this universe in the basement of his store. Corridors and empty rooms, where there are sometimes objects whose location seems meaningless, as if the design of this familiar universe was devoid of any human logic. A topsy-turvy world in which fascination very quickly gives way to terror, since “something” is there.

Birth of a phenomenon

These famous “backrooms”, or “back rooms” in French, were born following the publication of a photo in 2019 on the 4chan forum. In this image, the interior of an empty building is lit by the lights of a false ceiling, and the yellowing wallpaper and carpet suggest an outdated interior, giving an uncomfortable feeling. In 2024, we will learn that it was in fact a photo dating from 2002, from a furniture store under renovation.

The original photo, posted on 4chan in 2019, having defined the aesthetic of liminal spaces at the origin of Backrooms.Image: 4chan

From this simple image was born a “creepypasta”, these scary stories written collectively by Internet users, around the idea that there exists an immense extradimensional complex of empty rooms, accessible by leaving reality. This results in a real aesthetic called “liminal spaces” taken up by numerous artists, whether in photography, video games or even TV series, since the famous series Severence he is happily inspired.

Aged only twenty, the director of BackroomsKane Parson, is one of the instigators of this phenomenon. In 2019, while still a teenager, he created a short film in computer-generated images inspired by this photo, discovered for the first person through a VHS camera. What follows is a web series exploring this strange universe which will conquer the hearts of Internet users, since Kane Parson’s account will reach 3 million subscribers.

The British Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) et la Norvégienne Renate Reinsve (Sentimental value), two exceptional actors who lend themselves to the exercise of genre film.Image: A24

Excited by the concept of the young prodigy, the prestigious A24 studio, behind successes like Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) or even Marty Supreme (2026), provided him with the modest budget of 10 million dollars to adapt his series for the cinema.

The miracle works: the film marks A24’s best start at the American box office, exceeding $100 million in revenue in just six days. A success which joins that of Obsessionanother horror film released a month earlier and also signed by a YouTuber. A paradigm shift for Hollywood, which is seeing its first filmmakers from Gen Z.

Un rêve lucid

In this transition from short to long format, Backrooms is based on two characters: Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an alcoholic and freshly divorced, forced to sleep in his gigantic store in decline, and Mary (Renate Reinsve), his psychologist. If Clark denies being a toxic man, he consults to learn how to manage his frustrations. Which will become an obsession when he discovers the mysterious passage leading to this unique universe.

Obsessed with the idea of ​​mapping the labyrinth, he disappears after talking about it to his psychoanalyst, who then goes looking for him. She will end up falling, too, into this strange purgatory, which seems to reproduce in an approximate manner elements of memories belonging to those who get lost there.

Welcome to the back rooms where things make sense, even if they don’t seem like it.Image: A24

If the film must obviously be based on a scenario, we would have preferred to be immersed throughout in the twists and turns of these corridors with their ubuesque configuration, rather than juggling between the real world and that of the backrooms. However, if this impacts the pace, the deepening of the characters is necessary, since this film, never sewn with white thread, wants to be particularly cryptic and relies solely on psychological metaphors.

This enigmatic place, like generative artificial intelligence in its early days, seems to replicate in its own way what it interprets from its visitors, like “someone who would be asked to draw a dog without having ever seen one”, as the character explains. main.

Furthermore, the film begins on a philosophical note, explaining that as you go through life, the untrained mind accumulates patterns, habits and behaviors that keep us going in circles, leading us to continually create the same problems and continually seek the same solutions.

To believe that these backrooms are only the nightmarish manifesto of the human mind, which functions only through repetitions and blockages, constantly displaying the same mechanisms, these same patterns which can appear to us in dreams and which therapy can help to cure. In Backroomsthis feeling of in-between is manifested by an aesthetic transcribed through an atmosphere of strangeness, surrealism, nostalgia and sadness.

The genius of the film probably lies in this astonishing ability to visually create the horror of the twists and turns of the human psyche. We owe this feat to a young man of 20 who created with Backrooms the first great work of the Internet generation.

An original horror film, like a big middle finger to Hollywood, which seems to go in circles recreating the same films in its own way, over and over again…

“Backrooms” by Kane Parson can be seen in cinemas from June 17, 2026. Duration: 1h50

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