Backrooms is a horror film written and directed by Kane Parsons. It stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark, who is separated from his wife and trying to keep it together as his marriage is falling apart. Clark owns a furniture store, and is now also sleeping there and also struggling with alcoholism.
One night, he is watching TV and the lights start flickering so he goes downstairs to investigate the breakers and notices an odd outline on the wall in the shape of a door. When he gets closer he realizes that his hand can pass through the wall and he walks through the door into The Backrooms.
Clark ends up exploring more of the backrooms each day and becomes obsessed with it. He brings his employees from the store in there to show them and they both do not make it out.
Clark tells his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve) about the Backrooms, and after not hearing from him ventures to the furniture store looking for him. She finds his store empty and goes to the basement where she finds the doorway on the wall and ventures in. The Backrooms seem to take your trauma and psychological baggage and turn it into real horror, and she finds a good amount of it in there.
The original creepypasta for this film was started on 4Chan back in 2002, and was posted to the paranormal board there. It was originally just a photo of an empty furniture store being renovated with that yellow wallpaper.
Kane Parsons has been posting Backrooms videos on YouTube since 2022, and are similar to the film where a portal is discovered leading into a seemingly endless maze of rooms, all with the same yellow wallpaper and with various configurations of rooms as you get deeper into the maze. There are also monsters in the backrooms, and it isn’t advisable to stay long. There have been several video games and other creators who have also since posted Backrooms videos on YouTube, and it has become a cult phenomenon in recent years.
We enjoyed this film, and really hope that Kane Parsons has another one to follow this one up. While we liked that this made an appearance on the big screen, the videos Kane Parsons made leading up to this on YouTube had more of a traditional horror feel, whereas this was another film trying to emphasize grief in yet another form.
Overall, we would recommend this to fans of the YouTube series, and even newcomers, but would also recommend watching the Kane Parsons series on YouTube if you haven’t seen it. It provides a good amount of background information on The Backrooms, and shows a different side to the horrors that are experienced there. We think this one could have been better as a more traditional horror film, but this one could have been setting the stage for something much bigger to come as well, and we are excited for it and happy to see this indie filmmaker see such success that all started with a creepy photograph.
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