Backrooms is a 2026 A24 psychological horror film directed by Kane Parsons, based on the internet creepypasta about endless liminal rooms. It stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark, a furniture store owner who discovers a mysterious extradimensional space beneath his shop in a 1990s setting.
The film explores trauma, isolation, and the psychology of avoidance. Clark’s descent mirrors his refusal to take accountability for his failed marriage. Critics praised the set design and Ejiofor’s central performance. Entities called Still Lifes are distorted memory-copies of real people.
This review covers what the film is, how the horror mechanics work, what critics and users actually say, and what the ending means across the five major fan theories. By the end, you will have a clear verdict on whether this A24 debut belongs on your watchlist or not, and exactly what to expect before you sit down to watch it.
What Is the Backrooms Movie?
Who Directed the Backrooms Movie?
Backrooms is a 2026 psychological horror film directed by Kane Parsons, also known online as Kane Pixels. Parsons built his reputation through a widely popular YouTube series on the same subject before earning a feature-film deal with A24 at one of the youngest ages in Hollywood history. The screenplay was co-written with Will Soodik.
Parsons began releasing Backrooms short films on YouTube in January 2022. Those clips attracted millions of views and caught the attention of major producers. The final film features Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, and Mark Duplass. Producers include Shawn Levy, James Wan, and Osgood Perkins among others.
The film carries a runtime of 1 hour 50 minutes and is rated R. It was released in theaters on May 29, 2026, in the United States. An extended cut titled ‘Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition’ dropped on July 3, 2026, with 15 minutes of added footage.
What Is the Plot of the Backrooms Movie?
The plot follows Clark, a struggling furniture store owner who discovers a mysterious extradimensional space beneath his shop. Clark runs a pirate-themed store called Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire in what appears to be the 1990s setting. He is also in active therapy for marital issues when the discovery occurs.
Clark brings two employees, Kat and Bobby, into the Backrooms to document what he has found. Both employees are killed by creatures inhabiting the space. Clark then becomes increasingly drawn into the Backrooms and begins building a life inside it. His therapist, Mary, eventually enters the space to find him.
The story centers on Clark’s psychological decline and his refusal to take accountability for his failed marriage. The Backrooms serves as both a literal location and a metaphor for unresolved trauma. Mary’s own backstory mirrors Clark’s in ways that become significant by the film’s ending.
How Does the Backrooms Movie Work as Horror?
What Makes the Backrooms Scary?
The Backrooms generates dread through liminal space design rather than traditional jump scares or gore. The setting uses an endless maze of yellow-wallpapered rooms, misplaced furniture, and illogical architecture to create persistent unease. Parsons built the digital Backrooms using Blender software before collaborating with production designer Danny Vermette on physical set construction.
The film’s atmosphere draws heavily from the original creepypasta image, a 2019 photograph of an empty HobbyTown store with yellowing carpeting. That image sparked internet mythology about liminal spaces that feel deeply familiar yet wrong. Parsons captures this quality throughout the film’s runtime.
Reviewers at The Playlist called the film ‘an affecting horror film about imprisonment, memory distortion, and the private hell of mistaking isolation for refuge.’ The Daily Beast described it as casting ‘a surrealistic spell unlike anything else in contemporary cinema.’ The set design earned consistent praise across critic reviews.
Key atmospheric elements that create fear:
- Endless yellow-walled rooms built using Blender 3D software
- Misplaced furniture and illogical architectural layouts
- Creatures glimpsed briefly around corners, never fully revealed
- A soundtrack evoking darkened 1980s and 1990s nostalgia
- Still Life entities, distorted copies of real people from the characters’ memories
Does the Backrooms Movie Use Found Footage?
Backrooms opens with a found footage sequence but transitions away from that format for most of its runtime. The film’s first scene is structured as a recovered video tape from the 1990s, showing a scientist named Naren Warne exploring the Backrooms before being attacked. Some critics felt the shift away from found footage was a missed opportunity.
The strongest found footage sequences occur when Clark, Kat, and Bobby first explore the Backrooms together. These scenes have been described as some of the best found footage work of the decade by reviewers. The film’s tension drops noticeably after Kat and Bobby are killed and the found footage format is largely abandoned.
Parsons’ original YouTube shorts used found footage exclusively and built his fanbase. The feature film’s decision to center on Clark as a conventional protagonist rather than let the Backrooms itself be the main character divided critical opinion. Midlands Movies noted this structural choice as the film’s central weakness.
What Are the Backrooms in the Movie?
What Is Async in the Backrooms Movie?
The Backrooms is presented as a genuine extradimensional space discovered by a technology corporation called Async Research Institute. Async originally manufactured MRI machines before stumbling upon the Backrooms through what a character named Phil describes as threshold technology. The corporation has been researching and mapping the space in secret.
Phil, played by Mark Duplass, appears throughout the film in brief scenes, watching Clark’s furniture store commercials with his own family. He is eventually revealed as an Async researcher who can enter and exit the Backrooms. At the film’s end, Phil meets Mary and tells her that researching the Backrooms has become the most important thing in the world.
The Async angle introduces a corporate conspiracy layer to the horror. The organization’s presence raises questions about what they already know and what they are hiding. Phil’s calm demeanor during his final conversation with Mary mirrors the film’s opening therapy session in deliberate and unsettling ways.
Who Are the Monsters in the Backrooms?
The monsters are entities called Still Lifes, described as distorted copies of real people who have been ‘remembered’ by the Backrooms. Clark theorizes that just as the rooms themselves are corrupted versions of real places, these creatures are corrupted versions of real humans. One distorted female Still Life is implied to be a degraded copy of Clark’s ex-wife.
The most significant monster is Captain Clark, a towering and deformed entity that appears in the film’s third act. Captain Clark represents Clark’s inner rage and avoidance, his refusal to take accountability for his marriage’s failure given physical form. The entity merges with the Backrooms at the precise moment Clark stops trying to change.
Still Lifes are distinct from creatures previously shown in Parsons’ YouTube shorts, such as the Bacteria Man that fans expected to appear. The film’s world logic leaves room for both types of entity to coexist. Monsters are rarely shown directly and usually glimpsed at corners or heard at a distance, which preserves the sense of dread effectively.
Monster types in the Backrooms:
- Still Lifes: distorted human-shaped entities formed from memories of real people
- Captain Clark: Clark’s inner demon made physical, representing unresolved rage
- Background creatures: heard and partially glimpsed, never fully revealed
- The Bacteria Man: referenced in Parsons’ YouTube shorts, possibly coexistent in the same world
What Do Backrooms Movie Reviews Say?
What Are the Positive Reviews Saying?
Positive critics praise Backrooms as a genuinely original horror film built on immersive atmosphere and strong performances. Screen Daily scored it 80 out of 100, saying Parsons ‘assuredly harnesses the creepy, mind-bending potential of this liminal concept.’ The Playlist awarded it 100 and called it ‘far more haunting than anyone expected.’
Slant Magazine rated it 75 and described it as ‘undeniable, both as a future load-bearing pillar of the internet-born horror movement and for being built on a concept that feels truly new.’ Chris Stuckmann’s YouTube review has accumulated over 366,000 views. The film holds a 6.8 out of 10 on IMDb with 71 percent positive user ratings from 624 total reviews.
Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance receives consistent praise across reviews. Reviewers note that his portrayal of Clark as a man already on the edge makes the Backrooms’ influence feel earned rather than forced. Renate Reinsve’s work as Mary is also cited as a grounding element against the film’s more abstract sequences.
Critical scores for Backrooms (2026):
| Publication | Score | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| The Playlist | 100/100 | Highly Positive |
| The Daily Beast | 85/100 | Highly Positive |
| Screen Daily | 80/100 | Positive |
| Slant Magazine | 75/100 | Positive |
| LarsenOnFilm | 75/100 | Positive |
| New York Magazine | 60/100 | Mixed |
| The Times | 40/100 | Negative |
| IMDb User Rating | 6.8/10 | Generally Favorable |
What Are the Common Complaints?
Negative reviews focus on the film’s weak third act and its decision to sideline the Backrooms as a setting in favor of Clark’s psychology. The Times scored it 40 out of 100 and compared the experience to watching the 2007 video game Portal. Vulture gave it 60 and argued the film could not sustain its non-narrative premise across a full feature.
Midlands Movies argued the film’s central mistake was making Clark the main character rather than the Backrooms space itself. This reviewer felt found footage techniques would have better served the concept. The dinner table scene in the third act was also criticized as an unearned attempt to channel Hereditary-style intensity.
Some user reviewers noted the second half weakens considerably after Kat and Bobby’s deaths. The pacing of Clark’s descent into madness was described as feeling rushed. Multiple critics and viewers agreed the first half is significantly stronger than the ending the film eventually delivers.
What Does the Backrooms Movie Ending Mean?
What Happens to Clark at the End?
Clark becomes permanently merged with the Backrooms after refusing to take accountability for his past actions. Captain Clark, the monstrous entity formed from his unprocessed rage, overtakes him completely in the film’s third act. The film presents Clark’s fate as the consequence of choosing isolation and fantasy over genuine change.
The ‘dinner table scene’ is the film’s key turning point. Clark has recreated a domestic environment inside the Backrooms, populated by Still Life copies of people from his life. When Mary refuses to play the role of his ex-wife, Clark’s rage triggers Captain Clark’s emergence. His inner demon is his former self with nothing left but the monster.
Multiple fan theories surround the ending’s meaning. The Literal Theory holds that Clark genuinely died inside the Backrooms as a real physical dimension. The Trauma Allegory Theory argues that Clark’s fate represents what happens to people who refuse to confront their psychological wounds. Both readings are supported by elements in the film.
What Happens to Mary at the End?
Mary survives the Backrooms by confronting and weaponizing her own trauma rather than retreating from it. Unlike Clark, Mary faces her psychological wounds directly. The film presents her survival as a direct consequence of the emotional work she has already been doing before entering the space. Clark allows her to leave because she grants him permission to stay.
At the film’s end, Mary encounters Phil from Async, who wants to learn more about the Backrooms through conversation. Phil acknowledges that what happens to Mary is outside his control. This final scene mirrors the therapy session that opened the film, with Mary now occupying Clark’s position and Phil occupying Mary’s professional role.
The ending leaves deliberate ambiguity about Mary’s future. Whether she is truly free or is now within Async’s surveillance remains unclear. A post-credit or extended scene in the ‘Everything Must Go Edition’ may shed additional light on her fate. The film’s final frame is designed to be interpreted multiple ways simultaneously.
Is the Backrooms Movie Worth Watching?
How Does the Backrooms Compare to Similar Horror Films?
Backrooms draws clear comparisons to Annihilation (2018) in its use of a mysterious space that reflects and warps the trauma of those who enter it. Both films feature characters with unprocessed emotional wounds who enter an anomalous location where those wounds shape the environment around them. Both also end with the main character being duplicated or replaced.
The film’s liminal space aesthetic aligns it with The Shining and 1408, which also use physical locations as extensions of a protagonist’s psychological state. Unlike those films, Backrooms roots its dread in internet-born mythology rather than traditional haunted-house conventions. This gives it a distinctly contemporary texture those earlier films could not have.
Backrooms offers more than the typical horror release for viewers interested in films with genuine ideas behind the scares. The Parsons’ direction is technically accomplished for a debut feature. The performances from Ejiofor and Reinsve elevate material that could have settled for surface-level creepypasta aesthetics. The first two-thirds of the film, in particular, justify the critical attention it received.
Backrooms vs similar psychological horror films:
| Film | Setting Type | Trauma Theme | Found Footage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Backrooms (2026) | Internet liminal space | Accountability and isolation | Partial |
| Annihilation (2018) | Shimmer zone | Grief and self-destruction | No |
| The Shining (1980) | Haunted hotel | Violence and alcoholism | No |
| Hereditary (2018) | Family home | Grief and generational trauma | No |
Why Should You Watch Backrooms on Eat Proteins?
Backrooms is one of the most significant horror debuts of 2026, offering genuine psychological depth alongside its unsettling visual design. Our team at Eat Proteins tracked the film’s reception closely. This is the kind of horror that rewards attention and stays with you long after the credits end. It earns its place among the year’s best releases.
You’ve been looking for something that feels genuinely new. Backrooms delivers that. It’s not just internet nostalgia or creepypasta fan service. It’s a film about the rooms we build inside ourselves when we refuse to change. That’s a premise worth your 110 minutes. And honestly? The first two-thirds alone justify the ticket.
Our experts at Eat Proteins recommend this film to fans of slow-burn psychological horror who want their scares tied to real human stakes. Stream it, discuss the ending with someone, and then try to explain what you think Captain Clark actually represents. That conversation alone makes the watch worthwhile.