Finally there, finally seen! The phenomenon Backroomsmodern adaptation of the famous creepypasta, taken and adapted into series by Kane “Pixels†Parsonsyoung YouTuber now 21 years old and now a filmmaker. It’s the project that breaks everything in the cinema industry, since it collected more than 250 million dollars at the worldwide box office, an enormous performance that it shares with the phenomenon Obsession of Curry Barkerthe other horror film in form of the moment.
For beginners, Backroomsthese are these vast rooms stretching over thousands of kilometers, in which we can go by crossing a wall, a floor, a buggy surface, to leave our reality. As I said in an article I previously wrote, I love the concept of liminal spaces and especially the principle of “noclipping” reality. Lately, the film Exit 8 (2025) took up this concept and was clearly one of my favorites of the year. The promise, therefore, of tackling this delirium of non-dimensional spaces made me want it, especially since the film arrives very last in our country, after being released everywhere.
The story: Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is divorced and runs a furniture store. He discovers in his store an entrance door for Backrooms. He talks about it to Maryhis psychologist (Renate Reinsve), who doesn’t believe it.
A daring visual success
The first thing to highlight and applaud is the performance that Kane Parsons. Move from YouTube to a real artistic direction of cinema is not an easy task, but it fulfills the objective with flying colors. Backrooms is a daring visual success.
In all the moments and peaks of tension, we feel the omnipresent unease settling in thanks to the way of filming, to the sound editing which knows how to juggle between crackles, rises in tension and ruptures with silences. The jump scares are well-balanced, not excessive, and help to create peaks of stress at appropriate times.
Backroomsjust like Obsessiongreatly dusts off the horror genre. He manages to stress out his audience, unsettle them, make them freak out, without using the pompous artifices that we can see in the majority of horror productions for teenagers. We play on the image, the sound, the visceral fears of man, the memories… With even a cleverly orchestrated shot which recalls the masterpiece It Follows of David Robert Mitchell.
The mix of filming methods brings a real half-amateur, half-pro touch to the film, which manages to stand out thanks to its excellent found footage scenes. However, Backrooms has a small frustrating side: we feel so much that the universe of Backrooms full of ideas, we see that this film is introductory. There are many iterations of Backrooms presented in the feature film and, given the success, A24 semble déjà réfléchir à une suite.
A more fragile scenario that is concept
The source of weakness is probably the screenplay, which lingers a little too much on the psychological consultations between Mary et Clarkas if it were necessary to fill in what was between the scenes of Backrooms. Then the poor guy Clark seems to completely veer off course psychologically speaking, and it is not explained enough.
The outstanding questions are not sufficiently supported, the scenario works in a somewhat convoluted way. If the performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor brings true professionalism to the whole, that of Renate Reinsveyet excellent in Sentimental valueasks the question, the fault of an unfortunate tendency to be monolithic, without emotions.
Backrooms is a very successful conceptual film, magnificently filmed with careful shots which almost sound like surrealistic paintings, a real progressive and intelligent rise in tension despite a somewhat weak script. We’re having fun, but we’re still a little hungry. But we can only applaud Kane Parsonswho participates fully in redefining Hollywood cinema in his own way.
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