150 Word Review: 'Backrooms' (2026)
Down the rabbit hole
Is it important to know that Backrooms is based on a popular YouTube channel? No. That’s just a fun fact. Here’s another: Backrooms is one of the weirdest/most original genre movies in years. Director Kane Parsons’ existential journey into the bowels of a Best Buy from hell borrows from Lynch, Beckett, and Alice in Wonderland. There’s a little Jane Schoenbrun, too.
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as a middle-aged divorcee managing a failing big box furniture store who discovers a basement portal to another world, a labyrinth of office hallways and waiting rooms with yellowed walls lit by humming fluorescent lights. He’s emotionally unwell, but the backrooms beckon. These lifeless spaces are both familiar and otherworldly. Something wicked lurks in the shadows. Renate Reinsve plays his wounded therapist.
This is more than horror: it’s suburban gothic? Eldritch surrealism? A.I. slopcore? Parsons transforms a generation’s worth of video game and meme aesthetics into creepypasta cinema.
Creepypasta Cinema... I love it!
"Renate Reinsve plays his wounded therapist." Oof.