It started as a lone image of a former furniture store posted to 4chan, a bulletin board type of website, in 2019, and now it is one of the most successful movies of 2026.
The backrooms began as a spooky story spread across the internet about how if you wander around, there is a chance you may no-clip out of reality and end up in a never ending collection of rooms colored in yellow wallpaper, filled with the endless humming of lights.
The concept of no-clipping, comes from video games where pushing your character upon some sort of geometry that doesn’t have a boundary results in falling through to the outside of the level. People online would carry this idea and form the backrooms into levels with each floor having a different theme and even entities. One person decided to do things differently, though, this being Kane Parsons.
In 2022, Kane Parsons made a series about the backrooms on YouTube. This version differed from that of which the internet knew. It discarded the idea of levels and instead focused on the first floor of the backrooms, allowing there to be a lot more variations between all the rooms to make it still visually appealing and unique. Kane Parsons’s version of the backrooms even has its own storyline and entities within it.
When the series dropped, it immediately became popular and started trending. As the series went on, it gained so much popularity that it led to the creation of many fan-inspired games and animations. In 2023, Kane Parsons was given a deal with A24 to create a movie based around his series, and in May 2026, the movie would finally release to many positive reviews.
“Backrooms” made nearly 40 times its $10 million budget. It also became one of A24’s highest-grossing films of all time. The most impressive part of this, is that Kane Parson was only 20 years old when he directed the film.
For me, “Backrooms” was one of, if not, my favorite, films of 2026. The acting, set design and story were all incredible. There were many little details throughout the movie that made it so much fun to rewatch as well.
A favorite detail that I noticed in the movie is that there is a song that can be heard in the background in one of the scenes, “Ulterior Motives,” by Who’s Who. This song was made in 1985, but was lost media. People were all over the internet trying to find the full song. The full song wouldn’t be found until May of this year. Due to the backrooms having a heavy theme in the feeling of being lost, this song was perfect for the movie.
The movie also tends to rely more on unsettling and psychological horror. It is a slow build in the beginning but the pay off is worth it. While there are no true jumpscares, the movie manages to make the atmosphere so dreadful with its wonderfully crafted sound and set design.
Warning, before I go more into my review: this will contain spoilers for the movie, so I highly recommend watching it before reading any further.
The story focuses on Clark, a man who recently lost his house to his ex-wife. He has a bad habit of just blaming everything for his problems, locking himself in this endless loop of wanting to solve his problems but never actually being able to admit and overcome them, never wanting to actually change. The movie plays heavily into this with the backrooms itself being almost like a manifestation of that idea.
The best way to describe the look of the backrooms is that it is almost like, as the movie puts it; “Describing a dog to someone who has never seen one, and then asking them to draw it.” Another way to put it is that it is like trying to print something then taking a picture of it and printing it again. The details become more and more blocked out as it slowly becomes less and less recognizable from the original room.
This process represents the feeling of entrapment, sticking yourself in a never ending cycle of pain and trauma. The entities in this movie, known as still-lives, also take this idea. The still-lives take a distorted version of a moment in a person’s life where they feel mentally trapped. While most are shown to be not violent, Clark’s is extremely violent due to Clark’s real-life violent nature and how he feels like he can’t change out of that behavior.
The storytelling is extremely beautiful in this depiction, and it feels like I only notice more and more each time I rewatch it. I cannot recommend this movie enough to those who are a fan of psychological horrors.