Backrooms takes place in 1990, based on a series of short films made since 2022 by the director, Kane Parsons, which might not sound there’s a lot to it, as the protagonist – Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor – The Life of Chuck) – in this film’s case, is walking around a series of largely non-descript rooms with garish, yellow walls.
In an earlier scene, we see the results of another person’s traversal through the corridors, on 4:3-ratio old-style VHS ‘found footage’, where lots of weird stuff happens – like a bird flying in out of nowhere and accidentally ending itself on a wall, plus the sight of men in Hazmat suits who look like they’ve just wandered in off the set of the Half Life videogames.
For Clark, he works in a crappy furniture store with no customers. Due to his divorce, he’s having to sleep in the place overnight, and when the lights start playing up, he calls the meter man to check out the fusebox, which suddenly has extra switches that have been stuck on at a funny angle, and don’t seem to control anything.
What is real and what is Memorex, given that his head’s all over the place with splitting from his wife, leading to him visiting psychotherapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve – A Different Man). One night, after hearing something go bump in the middle of it, he accidentally falls through the wall and finds a place that’s similar but not the same. It does have some furniture, too, but just crammed into the centre of the room, along with a “STOP” sign with backwards lettering.
In other rooms, the contents fall partly through the floor, like a badly-made videogame where you stumble into a room that you weren’t meant to be in, and thus hasn’t been constructed properly… or where ANYTHING was made properly, like GTA IV-type clone, Samson.
The next train of thought is for him to try and get to the bottom of it, by going back the following nights with his two employees, Kat (Lukita Maxwell – AfrAId) and Bobby (Finn Bennett – A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms), the latter of whom has a videocamera, so they can document it.
As the film goes on, it also feels like a combination of the another videogame, Superliminal, and the house Homer Simpson and friends rebuilt for Ned Flanders in The Simpsons‘ Hurricane Neddy episode, the former because rooms are never quite what they seem – although that game has a series of puzzles while none features in this movie, and that house found the upstairs landing getting tighter and narrower, the further Ned went, until he realised it would be impossible to get into the bedroom door.
This situation of finding extra rooms that seemed impossible to exist, reminds me of a dream I once had where, after a few years of living in my house, I suddenly found an upstairs with a stack of extra space, a wealth of rooms and a HUGE extra main bedroom! Imagine my disappointment when I woke up.
However, there was no disappointment with Backrooms, since as weird stuff happens, it’s engaging. I can’t say I understand it, and another viewing may help, although at 109 minutes I won’t watch it again immediately. That said, some will, since like the other recent horror/thriller Obsession, this film is also doing better than expected, and after its opening week is moving into a bigger screen.
The only annoyance is that while Backrooms is a 1.85:1 film being shown in a 2.39:1 auditorium from Friday, the new release of Masters of the Universe is a 2.39:! film being shown in a 1.85:1 auditorium(!) I know cinemas allocate the films based upon the number of seats, but it’s still a silly outcome.
If you want a hint of what the film is like, check out the gameplay above from 2025 videogame, Escape The Backrooms. However, if you want to be completely green when encountering the yellow rooms, best to wait until AFTER you’ve seen the movie.
Backrooms is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 109 minutes
Release date: May 29th 2026
Studio: A24
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Redcode RAW (3.8K), X-OCN XT (8.2K), 1.33:1 – found footage scenes (RAW)
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 8.5/10
Director: Kane Parsons
Screenplay: Will Soodik
Backrooms series creator: Kane Parsons
Producers: Kori Adelson, Peter Chernin, Michael Clear, Dan Cohen, Chris Ferguson, Dan Levine, Shawn Levy, Roberto Patino, Osgood Perkins, Jenno Topping, James Wan
Music: Kane Parsons, Edo Van Breemen
Cast:
Clark: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Mary: Renate Reinsve
Phil: Mark Duplass
Bobby: Finn Bennett
Kat: Lukita Maxwell
Naren Warne: Avan Jogia
Pirate Clark: Robert Bobroczkyi
Young Mary: Ember Ambrose
Nora: Krista Kosonen
Meterman: Philip Granger
Robin: Katharine Isabelle
Big Wayne: Peter New
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.