Year’s Most Ambitious Thriller Brings Internet Phenomenon to Life

(SeaPRwire) –   Each generation shapes horror in its own image. For the era of Hammer Films, terror resided in Gothic castles draped in cobwebs and shadowed crypts. By the 1980s, under Stephen King’s influence, fear had shifted to the abandoned house at the end of a quiet, all-American street. Today, with Gen Z and Generation Alpha spending much of their lives online, it’s only natural that the spaces haunting their imaginations are digital. That’s where Backrooms—and its 21-year-old creator, Kane Parsons—come in.

Parsons was still in high school when he uploaded “The Backrooms (Found Footage)” to YouTube, tapping into a rising fascination with “liminal horror”—a genre that transforms ordinary, forgotten spaces like empty malls, sterile corridors, and flickering fluorescent-lit hallways into realms of eerie, otherworldly dread. That original video, crafted using the computer-graphics software Blender, has since amassed an astonishing 78 million views. Now, with A24’s support, the Backrooms have leapt from screen to reality: a sprawling 30,000-square-foot physical set built specifically for the live-action adaptation of Parsons’ web series.

It’s worth noting that a vast body of Backrooms lore has grown online, though viewers needn’t study it beforehand. In fact, approaching the film with no prior knowledge enhances the disorienting effect of its surreal environment. The movie opens with a direct nod to Parsons’ original video: an unseen cameraman panics after suddenly materializing in an endless maze of identical rooms, all lined with the same yellow wallpaper and worn, musty carpet. As he wanders, a pixelated figure emerges from a shadowed corner—prompting a frantic reaction before the feed abruptly cuts out.

The film’s world-building is deliberately elusive, hinting at a grand sci-fi/horror narrative while revealing little about its mechanics. At times, it feels like playing a video game—characters navigate strange environments, face threats, and loop back to where they started. Gradually, it becomes clear that each person’s experience in the Backrooms is uniquely personal: the entity governing this liminal dimension torments individuals by weaving their own psychological wounds into the environment, twisting familiar imagery into surreal reflections of their inner lives.

These distortions include furniture that fuses with walls and floors, and signs or banners that degrade ordinary messages—like a store sale or grand opening—into nonsensical fragments. As the story unfolds and Parsons gradually reveals the film’s “real-world” context, these bizarre elements begin to cohere. Set in 1990, Backrooms embraces a VHS-era visual style, while its production design channels the soft pastels and Southwestern motifs popular at the time.

The focus remains on the mundane and mass-produced, crafting a cold, impersonal atmosphere that mirrors the hollow emotional states of the isolated characters. Indeed, it’s telling that the characters aren’t introduced until now—they’re largely unremarkable. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, an architect turned furniture salesman who runs the ambiguously named Cap’N Clark’s Ottoman Empire in Silicon Valley’s suburbs. Freshly divorced and financially strained, Clark sleeps in his store, drowning his bitterness in nightly drinks.

It’s during one of these late-night store wanderings that Clark first “no-clips” into the Backrooms—plummeting through a wall into the humming, interdimensional void that gives the film its premise. Over time, he pulls his employee Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) into the mystery, followed by his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), who initially dismisses the Backrooms as a delusion—until she too tumbles into them. Mary carries her own share of emotional baggage, which gains significance as she ventures deeper and realizes she’s not alone.

Parsons did not write the screenplay; that task fell to television writer Will Soodik, whose conventional approach clashes with the film’s unsettling atmosphere. While simplifying the narrative may be pragmatic given the rich visual complexity, the result is a formulaic script undermined by flat characters, a thin plot, and clumsy exposition. A string of tense, claustrophobic chase sequences partially compensates by keeping audiences on edge right up to the abrupt, enigmatic finale. Still, it’s hard to overlook that the Backrooms themselves remain far more compelling than the story unfolding within them.

Parsons clearly possesses a director’s eye: his framing of the horizon in a series of powerful establishing shots alone demonstrates his visual talent. His vision for Backrooms is rich with strange, disquieting details, drawing inspiration from masters like Stanley Kubrick—echoes of 2001: A Space Odyssey are evident in the design—and David Lynch, particularly the supernatural boundary of Twin Peaks’ Black Lodge. The young director has masterfully constructed a haunting stage. One can only wish the story matched its brilliance.

From A24, Backrooms debuts in theaters on May 29.