Release Date: May 29, 2026
Runtime: 105 min (1hr 45min)
Rated: R – language and some violent content/bloody images
Production Companies: 21 Laps Entertainment; Atomic Monster; North Road Films; Phobos
Producers: James Wan, Michael Clear, Roberto Patino, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, Osgood Perkins, Chris Ferguson, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, Kori Adelson
Cinematography: Jeremy Cox
Editing: Greg Ng
Music/Composer: Edo Van Breemen & Kane Parsons
Backrooms (2026)
Director: Kane Parson (Kane Pixels)
Writer: Will Soodik (based on web series by Kane Parsons)
Cast: Chiewetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, Avan Jogia, Robert Bobroczkyi
Being younger than YouTube itself, Kane Parsons — A.K.A. Kane Pixels — has managed to open one of the biggest films in A24’s history with a notion he conceptualized through that very platform, and through the DIY mastery of software like Blender, brought entirely from his own imagination to life. Backrooms opens up to a vast audience of fans and longtime subscribers who watched Parsons conjure these videos from his bedroom — essentially building a reality that felt dreamlike, surreal, and uncomfortably close to the feeling of the uncanny valley. Almost as if something is human-like, or trying to be, but not exactly. There might be one too many mouths, or three pairs of eyes. And in an odd way, memory does sort of function that way at times — familiar enough to recognize, just distorted enough to unsettle.
Ever since, Kane and his built-up universe of liminal space, creepy corners, and impossible architecture have been on the rise. Also noteworthy is A24’s acquiring of the film, which can theoretically grow into a full franchise given the evident success of this opening feature. Add powerhouse Chiwetel Ejiofor and recent awards season magnet Renate Reinsve, and it’s bound to flourish to its full potential.
Backrooms equates to exactly that word: potential. Something that many believe didn’t quite live up to the built-up hype. And to some extent, opportunities were missed — but at his age, a degree of imperfection was bound to be part of the equation, and as loudly as people are groaning about what wasn’t there, it is still undeniably present: the potential. The Backrooms are physically endless, and so is the potential for this universe — creatively, narratively, and from a purely monetary standpoint, as a franchise.
The film opens with found footage — a direct homage to Parsons’ very first YouTube video — courtesy of Naren Warne (Avan Jogia), immediately setting the foundation for everything to come. Right off the bat, for the longtime fans of Kane Pixels, the transition from small laptop and mobile phone scale to a full theater screen will be nothing short of astonishing. It is one of the most universally praised portions of the film, teasing the liminal yet expansive universe ahead, as well as the scares that will follow. That sequence alone is proof of concept — Kane on the big screen isn’t just a novelty. It works.
Clark (Ejiofor) works in a furniture store and has recently separated from his wife. He’s fixated on his right to the possessions — mainly the house — that he feels financially entitled to, and as the film progresses, so does his aggression and his conviction that he’s the righteous party. But the deeper we go, the more you begin to wonder: is this really about the house? Or is there something far more interior at play, something that mirrors the Backrooms themselves — vast, disorienting, and full of things he hasn’t confronted yet?
Clark’s therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Reinsve), carries her own weight — memories from childhood, mainly revolving around her mother’s deteriorating mental health. As the film unravels and we venture deeper into the Backrooms alongside Clark, we are also fed bits and pieces of the truth behind Mary’s past, administered gradually and deliberately, like breadcrumbs in an endless corridor.
The uneasiness of the space is highly effective, owing largely to Kane’s growing mastery in the visual effects department — and naturally so, given that this is a universe he himself architected from scratch. It pairs exceptionally well with the score, which draws direct inspiration from his YouTube series, producing an eerie and warped atmosphere that frequently amplifies the gravity of a given situation. And when the film calls for it, the music slows and recedes, letting you sit inside the negative space — examining stillness, deliberating over movement you’re almost certain you caught from the corner of your eye. That restraint is one of the more sophisticated choices in the film.
What makes the production even more remarkable is that Kane didn’t just design these spaces digitally — he modeled the sets first in Blender, then had them physically constructed in real time on set. Thirty thousand square feet of actual Backrooms built and walked through by cast and crew alike, some of whom reportedly got lost. That tangibility seeps into the performances. It’s one thing to act against a green screen and another entirely to be genuinely disoriented inside a space designed to disorient you.
Backrooms has proven to be divisive when it comes to its plot and the narrative layered into this vast, endless world. Clark and Mary are the emotional centers of our liminal experience, and what Parsons and writer Will Soodik transform these rooms into is something more nuanced than a haunted house premise: internal manifestation. Memory. Pent-up feelings given physical form. The objects that populate these endless rooms — furniture, clothing, scattered remnants of lives — aren’t as random as they initially appear. They are, in their own way, evidence.
Clark’s character arc is particularly compelling in how the film doles it out. Everyone arrives eager to see the Backrooms themselves, but there is far more beneath the surface — and Clark is one of the primary keys to understanding what these spaces actually are. By the film’s final act, the parts of Clark’s personality that barely surfaced in his presenting persona are fully exposed, and not for the better. It is a portrait of a man who, stripped of the architecture of his normal life, has nothing left to hide behind.
Mary’s journey goes just as deep, handled with a different texture. Where Clark’s unraveling is aggressive, Mary’s is archaeological. Both are carrying heavy trauma from different periods of their lives, and both are undeniably shaped by it in the present tense, at the very moment they find themselves entwined. When the two finally confront each other near the film’s climax, it is a collision of inner worlds — a moment that rewards every quiet, patient scene that preceded it.
Now, back to the divisiveness. A good deal of the disappointment seems to stem from unmet expectations — specifically, the feeling that the film didn’t mine every easter egg, lore detail, and community-built corner of the expanded Backrooms mythology. And that’s a fair observation. The universe that fans have constructed across wikis, Reddit threads, and their own YouTube channels is extraordinarily dense, and a ninety-minute feature film simply cannot honor all of it. But viewed through a creative and critical lens, Parsons should be commended for translating his small-scale bedroom projects onto the silver screen with a remarkable degree of seamlessness. The tonal continuity between the web series and the feature is genuine — and that’s not a given when Hollywood gets its hands on something.
There is also the matter of the ghost director discourse — the circulating claim that Parsons was merely a face for marketing, a compelling headline for A24 rather than the actual architect of the film. Mark Duplass publicly shut the rumor down, and the work itself speaks clearly enough. The visual language, the restraint with music, the obsessive attention to the yellow of a wall — these are not the choices of a figurehead. They are the decisions of someone who has been living inside this world for years.
Some viewers will take issue with the longer, more lingering scenes — calling them slow, claiming boredom. But the Backrooms by definition don’t contain much. That emptiness is the point. Clark and Mary wander these endless rooms in search of something, and what they ultimately uncover has less to do with the architecture around them and everything to do with what they’ve been carrying into it. Clark is in search of himself when it all comes down to it. Mary is in search of Clark — and in the process, finds out far more about herself than she bargained for.
Ultimately, Backrooms carries the weight of enormous expectation on the shoulders of a twenty-year-old director who built his career in a medium Hollywood is only now beginning to take seriously. The visual effects, score, production design, and set construction all perform at the highest level for a film of this nature and scale. The story stumbles in a few places — there are moments where the ambition slightly outpaces the execution — but Ejiofor and Reinsve anchor it with conviction, giving the film an emotional core that holds even when the plot loosens its grip.
And if you find yourself watching this in a full theater — and you should — come prepared. The audience becomes part of the experience in a way few horror films manage anymore. The Backrooms have a particular talent for isolation, for making the person next to you feel miles away, and for placing you, quietly and without warning, inside the shoes of someone wandering something they do not understand and cannot explain. You will hear things. You will see movement just beyond the edge of your vision. Whether that movement is in the film or in your own mind is, ultimately, the question Backrooms was always asking.