this horror film is a must see

There are horror films that rely on jump scares and cheap tricks, and then there are the rare ones that burrow under the skin and stay there long after the credits roll. Backrooms, the feature debut from director Kane Parsons, belongs firmly in the latter category. Built on dread, atmosphere and a genuinely unnerving sense of spatial wrongness, the film announces Parsons as a formidable new voice in genre filmmaking one who clearly understands that what lingers in the imagination is always more frightening than what is placed directly in front of the audience.

A furniture salesman lost in more ways than one

At the center of the story is Clark, a deeply troubled furniture salesman played with quiet, unraveling intensity by Chiwetel Ejiofor. When Clark stumbles into a vast underground labyrinth of seemingly infinite rooms, the film’s premise clicks into place with an almost geometric precision. The endless corridors, bathed in an off-yellow glow, feel strangely familiar even as they grow increasingly ominous. His therapist Mary, played by Renate Reinsve with characteristic emotional intelligence, is pulled into the nightmare alongside him.

The narrative itself is not the film’s greatest strength. Parsons and screenwriter Will Soodik spend a noticeable amount of time in the early going explaining the backstories of both characters, and some of that exposition lands awkwardly. But once the two are swallowed by the labyrinth, the story becomes secondary to the sensation of being there and that sensation is extraordinary.

A world building triumph from a first time filmmaker

What Parsons achieves on a technical level in Backrooms is genuinely impressive. The cinematography, production design, editing and visual effects combine to create one of the most convincingly realized horror environments in recent memory. The backrooms feel like a place that exists, a space that breathes and expands and watches. It is the kind of filmmaking that makes you forget you are watching a constructed thing at all.

The film draws on a now recognizable tradition of what has been loosely termed liminal horror the transformation of ordinary, mundane spaces into something deeply uncanny. Recent films like Exit 8 have worked in similar territory, but Backrooms carries additional psychological weight. In the tradition of experimental horror literature, the setting begins to mirror the inner lives of the characters, making the labyrinth feel less like a physical location and more like an externalized mental state.

Atmosphere over answers and better for it

Parsons shows real confidence in how he handles the film’s final stretch. Rather than delivering a tidy explanation for the mysteries at the heart of the story, he lets ambiguity do the heavy lifting. In one particularly effective moment, a character attempting to make sense of events is quietly faded into the background, as if the film itself is dismissing the very idea of resolution. The closing sequence is understated and deeply unsettling in equal measure the kind of ending that rewards patience and punishes those expecting conventional closure.

There is also a chase sequence midway through the film that deserves special mention. Joyously staged and genuinely pulse quickening, it demonstrates that Parsons can deliver kinetic genre thrills just as effectively as he builds slow burning dread. It is a sequence that would feel at home in a much more expensive production.

A debut that earns its scares

Backrooms is not a perfect film. Its narrative stumbles in the first act, and some viewers may wish for slightly more character depth before the descent begins. But as a showcase of visual filmmaking, atmospheric craft and directorial ambition, it is difficult to fault. Parsons, who developed the concept through a series of YouTube shorts, has transformed a viral internet mythology into something genuinely cinematic and unshakeably haunting.

At 110 minutes, the film earns every one of them. It opens in theaters and is rated R for violent content, language and bloody images.