Review by Tim Robins
The owner of a furniture store finds a secret doorway that leads him to an endless stretch of rooms. When he disappears, his therapist ventures into the unknown to rescue him…
The Review: Not, as you may imagine from the title, a documentary about gay night clubs, The Backrooms is an exercise in ambient film making from 19-years-young director Kane Parsons.
The film’s origins lie online, as a couple of photographs of a furniture store being refurbished. As is the way of things, the photographs, particularly one of an empty, yellow wallpapered room, were spun by their audience into a type of post known as creepypasta.
Backrooms’ lore was first elaborated in an anonymous post back in May, 2019, warning of the danger of “noclipping” out of reality and “ending up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in.”
Adding, “God save you if you hear something nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.” (see The History of The Backrooms | Horror History – 1:23 – on YouTube). And, in the film, it does.
For those not in the know (as I wasn’t), a noclip is a cheat mode allowing players to move through floor, walls or other obstacles as if they didn’t exist. A noclip function can give access to hidden or developer-only areas of a game.
Parson’s film remains true to the post. The characters are ‘noclipped’ into the back rooms through a soft, yielding wall in the basement of a furniture store. This invisible entrance seems to be created after an electrician flips some curiously placed, red, trip switches in the store’s fuse box.
Among those who journey across the Backrooms’ boundary are: the store’s ill at ease owner, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), his therapist, Dr Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), employee “Kat” (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend “Bobby” (Finn Bennett), who Clark has persuaded to record the extraordinary realm on video.
As the cast draw us into their psychological worlds, the rooms come to imperfectly mirror their reality. Elements of the therapy sessions between Clark and Dr Kline become restaged as if they were a dinner party hosted by Hannibal Lecter. Dinner guests can be pulled apart and eaten as if their bodies were made of dough. Eventually, the film becomes something of a stalk and slash, in which Dr Kline’s until becomes the “final girl”.
The Backrooms reflect our world as if through a glass darkly. Everything from Clark’s store and beyond become replicated in the rooms, but not entirely as they, in reality, are. Furniture melts together with floors and walls or is almost fused into small heaps. Dimensions change, forced perspectives end in doors and staircases leading up and down to unexpected places. We seem to glimpse other people, but, close up, they too are not what they seem. Nothing remains unchanged.
It’s worth paying attention to even the supposedly real world settings. For example, when Clark visits his therapist for a second time, the chairs in her room have changed from a sofa to an armchair. I read this as a nod to Kubrick’s staging of The Shining (1980). A row of houses with garishly orange doors, as if half seen through the directorial eye of Wes Anderson.
Before this film, Parson’s made his own contribution to Backrooms’ lore in several eerily atmospheric YouTube videos. They are worth a watch, and certainly demonstrate his skill in creating a creepy atmosphere.
Where Parson’s YouTube videos use CGI generated rooms, actual sets were built for the film. This gives The Backrooms a convincing physicality – performers become squeezed between ever narrowing walls, or must climb forced perspective corridors that end in tiny doors. Think Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, crossed with the MC Escher’s “Relativity” (1953).
The Backrooms film draws on, but doesn’t entirely belong to, the popular online genres of liminal and analogue horror. The film is too populated and storied to provide a purely liminal experience. And the film only gestures to analogue horror. While we do watch scenes on old TV sets, CCTV, and video tape, as a whole, the film is too staged, too artfully shot and too obviously performed to pass as found footage. And that’s fine, because the director doesn’t want it to.
Some have criticised The Backrooms as being too ponderous. It really isn’t. Irish soft boy, Regular Eyepatch Wolf, a grappler, anime and liminality fan has replied to these criticisms, saying, “People Hate The Backrooms Movie?” onYouTube .
“If you want to get the most out of this movie you’re gonna have to Twin Peaks’ it… It has to be something you sit back and sink into (…). I’m not saying like turn your brain off. It’s more you are trying to be in the moment with the media.” He advises his young adult audience to try to experience the film as it happens, “as opposed to understanding what the plot is about”. I agree.
Personally, I worried that The Backrooms was playing a young person’s game – a film made by a young adult, for young adults. I was one of five of the oldest people in a reasonably full cinema (for 3.05 pm on a Thursday afternoon). Most of the audience seemed to be taking a break from swatting for ‘A’ levels. And the smattering of chuckles at unknown things on screen suggested “Easter Eggs” that were passing over my head or behind my back.
However, the intelligent script, cinematography and direction are playful and reward a breadth of cultural experience as much as the eye. If you ‘got’ Gilman’s 1892 short story The Yellow Wallpaper, 1994’s found footage film, The Blair Witch Project and Tarkovsky’s 1972 re-imagining of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris as a story of loss and memory, I am confident you will ‘get’ The Backrooms.
The Backrooms are creepy, unnerving and fun to hang out in. Caught out by the film’s jump cut ending, I could have done with more.
Tim Robins
Head downthetubes for…
• The Backrooms – Found Footage) – YouTube
• The Backrooms – Found Footage #2 – YouTube
• The Backrooms – Found Footage #3 – YouTube
• Perfect perspectives in Up and Down | Museum Escher in The Palace (escherinhetpaleis.nl)
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
A freelance journalist and Doctor Who fanzine editor since 1978, Tim Robins has written on comics, films, books and TV programmes for a wide range of publications including Starburst, Interzone, Primetime and TV Guide.
His brief flirtation with comics includes ghost inking a 2000AD strip and co-writing a Doctor Who strip with Mike Collins. Since 1990 he worked at the University of Glamorgan where he was a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Media Studies and the social sciences. Academically, he has published on the animation industry in Wales and approaches to social memory. He claims to be a card carrying member of the Politically Correct, a secret cadre bent on ruling the entire world and all human thought.
Categories: Features, Film, Other Worlds, Reviews
In Review: Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu 
In Review: Akira 
In Review: The Magic Faraway Tree (2026) 
In Review: Guido Crepax – “We loved you so much, Valentina” at the Galerie Martel, Brussels
I also found I was one of the oldest at the showing I attended. After so many pronouncements of the death of cinemagoing it was heartening to be in a packed screening mostly populated by a generation we’re told no longer have the attention span for feature length narratives. It perhaps helped that I booked for the first available screening so most of the audience will have been committed to the experience. Nevertheless I’m delighted to report their focus and behaviour was near impeccable. And I felt the movie deserved this, being far from ponderous. Some sequences were nerve shredding but the calmer interludes were also intriguing. Unusually the film has also stayed with me though thankfully, so far, not in my dreams!