The highly anticipated Backrooms film, directed and inspired by Kane Parsons’ online series of the same name, is finally here, and it’s better than anything we could’ve expected! 

First, huge applause to Parsons for directing such a stunning film at just twenty years old. He is now credited as the youngest director of an A24 film.

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Backrooms is more than an idea turned into a movie, it's an experience. Fans of the original online series know the concept began with a single post that Kane expanded into a chilling, immersive YouTube saga.

What draws audiences to this film are its haunting visuals and the way familiar, nostalgia-tinged spaces are made unsettling. The backrooms tap into a shared sense of uncanny familiarity. Rooms and places that feel known but wrong. Though the internet has spawned countless fan interpretations, this movie stays true to Kane’s original vision and the story he wanted to tell. Seen that way, the Backrooms become a fragile, layered concept, and when paired with characters battling their own inner demons, the result is a powerful, unforgettable blend.

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Kane’s Backrooms centers on memory, how the way we choose to remember can warp things, rendering them odd or misshapen, much like everything inside the backrooms. That theme hits hardest when Mary (Renate Reinsve) ends up there, bound to a chair and forced to dine with Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who keeps a disfigured woman his imagined wife in the room.

Their conversation revolves around memory and Clark’s flaws. His refusal to accept responsibility defines him and, we suspect, is what anchors him to the backrooms. Once a failed architect who ran a second-rate furniture store, Clark finds a hollow sense of control in the lonely, haunting spaces – an illusion of having done something that mattered.

The motif of being "wired" recurs throughout the film, first from Mary and later hurled back at her by Clark at the story’s climax, just before he’s killed by the film’s true menace, the "entity." That entity, a monstrous escalation of Clark’s pirate-costumed persona from his early ad, isn’t revealed until the final thirty minutes, and the payoff is effective.

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Clark’s death, at the hands of a gargantuan version of himself, feels symbolic. His flaws ultimately trap and destroy him. Mary, by contrast, escapes and is interrogated by Phil (Mark Duplass), a scientist at A-Sync, the film’s fictional MRI company. We wish the film had probed A-Sync’s role more deeply, a company that builds MRI machines presiding over a nightmare tied to memory and loss would’ve amplified the film’s themes.

Technically and thematically, this is a near-flawless blend of psychological and visual horror. With a strong cast and crew, Backrooms is an ideal film to kick off your summer. Backrooms is playing in theaters now.