Backrooms is a 2026 American science fiction psychological horror film directed and co-scored by Kane Parsons (in his feature-length directorial debut) and written by Will Soodik. It is based on Parsons's web series and inspired by the "Backrooms" creepypasta. In the film, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner, and Mary (Renate Reinsve), his therapist, discover a dimension of seemingly endless liminal spaces accessed through the basement of the store; Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell also star.
After uploading the web series in January 2022, Parsons was approached by several studios about potentially adapting his series into a feature film. In February 2023, it was officially announced that work had begun on a film adaptation of the Backrooms based on Parsons's videos, with Parsons directing. Roberto Patino was initially set to write the screenplay, but was replaced by Will Soodik. Filming began in the summer of 2025, and concluded in August 2025.
Backrooms premiered at the Aero Theatre in Los Angeles on May 7, 2026, and was theatrically released in the United States by A24 on May 29. The film received positive reviews from critics and has grossed $81.4 million domestically and $117.9 million worldwide, becoming A24's biggest opening and making Parsons the youngest filmmaker to reach number one at the box office.
In 1990, scientists from the Async Research Institute watch recovered video shot by researcher Naren Warne, who, while on an expedition into a large extradimensional space ("the Backrooms"), was separated from his group, chased and attacked by an unknown entity.
Furniture store owner Clark is struggling to cope with his alcoholism and recent divorce. He regularly visits therapist Mary Kline, who is working through her own trauma related to her agoraphobic, paranoid mother and the demolition of her childhood home. Preoccupied with the store's tenuous finances, Clark hires an electrician to investigate its mysteriously high electrical bills and flickering lights. The electrician finds three colored breaker switches installed at an odd angle in the distribution board that do not connect to anything inside the store.
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Reference material for this entry is drawn from the open encyclopedic record, including Wikipedia , available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Images are credited individually beside each photo.
Having taken up residence in the store, Clark experiences continued electrical irregularities that lead him to the basement, where he notices a glowing slit in a wall. Investigating it, he falls through the wall and enters the Backrooms, a labrynthine and chaotic expanse of dull yellow rooms, long hallways and malformed furniture, silent aside from the buzz of overhead fluorescents. Clark finds Naren's belongings and narrowly escapes back to the store when an unseen creature chases him. Async scientist Phil watches these events via a surveillance camera.
Clark tells Mary about the Backrooms but is met with skepticism. He recruits his assistant manager, Kat, and her boyfriend, Bobby, to help him film the Backrooms as proof of his claims. The trio enters and records their discoveries. While Bobby explores a steeply sloped corridor, he is ambushed and apparently killed by an unseen entity, which drags him along with Clark and Kat into an unexplored area where they are separated. Clark runs through various bizarre and disordered spaces, eventually coming across humanoid entities that chase him to a dead end. He hears Kat call out to him and sets the camera down to look for her. Something unknown then picks up the camera, as Kat screams for Clark to look behind him.
Some time later, Mary receives an answering machine message from Clark, who tells her that he will not return. Meanwhile, while watching TV with his family, Phil recognizes Clark in an ad for his store. Mary visits Clark's store, finds the doorway into the Backrooms, and enters. While wandering the halls, she finds Clark, who chokes her unconscious.
A tied-up Mary awakens with Clark in a space resembling a dining room. They are joined by several of the crude imitations of humans that the Backrooms creates, who look on impassively as he reveals Kat's severed head in a refrigerator. Clark demands that Mary continue their therapy sessions via role-play, but Mary declines, instead revealing that Clark's refusal to take responsibility for his failures was the real reason his wife left him. Clark briefly comes to his senses and frees Mary, but they are interrupted by the arrival of a towering, deformed copy of Clark dressed in the costume of the store's pirate sultan mascot. Clark is killed trying to calm the Pirate entity, which then begins chasing Mary as she flees across a succession of vast, chaotic and surreal spaces. Cornered in an imperfect replica of the furniture store's showroom, she fights off the entity using a chunk of cement she had retrieved from her childhood home. She then inadvertently triggers an Async gas trap and encounters a group of scientists in hazmat suits, who subdue the Pirate and take her back with them to their headquarters.
After recovering, Mary is taken to an interrogation room where she meets Phil, who explains that Async was a company that made MRI machines until they discovered the Backrooms, and have since focused on researching and mapping it. When asked how she came across the Backrooms and what she found there, she repeats Clark's description of it as a faulty, misremembered copy of reality. Mary asks if Async plans to let her go, but Phil replies evasively. Inside the Backrooms, a series of spaces are limned by Mary's memories of trauma, ending in a poorly copied interrogation room in which a fractured, deformed Mary sits still and silent.
Cast
Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark, a furniture store owner and failed architect
Renate Reinsve as Dr. Mary Kline, Clark's therapist
Mark Duplass as Phil, an Async scientist and Backrooms researcher
Finn Bennett as Bobby, Kat's boyfriend
Lukita Maxwell as Kat, Clark's employee and Bobby's girlfriend
Avan Jogia as Naren Warne, an Async explorer of the Backrooms
Robert Bobroczkyi as Pirate Clark, a large entity resembling Clark in a pirate costume that inhabits the Backrooms
Krista Kosonen as Nora Kline, Mary's mother
Production
Development
On January 7, 2022, Kane Parsons began uploading an anthological video series titled Backrooms onto his YouTube channel Kane Pixels, the concept being based on the internet creepypasta of the same name. In February 2023, a film adaptation was announced as a joint production between A24, Chernin Entertainment, Atomic Monster, and 21 Laps Entertainment, with Parsons directing, making it his feature-length directorial debut, and Roberto Patino writing. The film is produced by James Wan, Shawn Levy, and Osgood Perkins. Chernin Entertainment and A24 co-financed the film for under $10 million.
Parsons drew inspiration from the Portal video game franchise, the television series Mr. Robot, the films One Hour Photo (2002) and Punishment Park (1971), and the anime series Paranoia Agent for the film, as well as for his web series.
Casting
In May 2025, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Cristin Milioti entered negotiations to star in the film. Ejiofor was confirmed the following month, with Will Soodik writing the latest draft. Milioti's deal ultimately fell through and Renate Reinsve was cast in her place in June. Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell and Avan Jogia were added to the cast in July. Jogia was a fan of Parsons' original webseries before he was cast. Despite his character's relatively small part, Jogia recalls he and Parsons spent extensive time discussing the lore of the film during production.
Design
To create the liminal space environments of the Backrooms, Parsons used the 3D software Blender, with production designer Danny Vermette adapting his digital designs for physical construction. More than 30,000 square feet (2,800 m2) of Backrooms sets were built across four sound stages for the film, with Vermette comparing the fitting of the sets with Tetris, using 37,000 square feet (3,400 m2) of wallpaper and 29,000 square feet (2,700 m2) of carpeting, much of it sourced locally in Canada to avoid the impact of U.S. tariffs. The production design also emphasized verticality within the sets to make actors' interactions with the environment more physically challenging. People reportedly got lost on set.
Filming
Principal photography began in Vancouver, Canada on July 7, 2025, under the working title of Effigy. Filming wrapped on August 14, 2025.
Music
Edo Van Breemen and Parsons composed the score for the film. The Boards of Canada track "The Word Becomes Flesh" from their album Inferno plays during the film's end credits. The tracks "Ulterior Motives", a well-known former lost media song, and "B1 – All that follows is true" by The Caretaker, also feature in the film.
Release
Backrooms premiered at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica on May 7, 2026, and was released in the United States by A24 on May 29, 2026. It was released in South Korea on May 27.
Reception
Box office
As of May 31, 2026, Backrooms has grossed $81.4 million in the United States and Canada, and $36.5 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $117.9 million.
In early May 2026, initial projections had Backrooms grossing around $20 million in its opening weekend. By the week of its release, projections had increased to $40–50 million. The film grossed $38.4 million on its first day and went on to debut to $81.5 million domestically (and a total of $118 million worldwide), becoming A24's biggest opening weekend.
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 89% of 209 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "A startlingly assured feature debut from director Kane Parsons, Backrooms bends the liminal spaces that have haunted the internet for years into a horror film that's as mesmerizing as it is terrifying." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it a 68% positive score, with 53% saying they would definitely recommend it.
Amy Nicholson for Los Angeles Times described the film as a feature expansion of Parsons's web series, praising its unsettling visual concept but thought it less a conventional horror film and more a surreal, dreamlike experience of a moving Salvador Dalí painting. She also highlighted the performances of the cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. Dan Bayer of Next Best Picture praised Reinsve and Ejiofor for conveying emotion through subtle acting even when the script is sparse. He also said Parsons arrived "as a fully formed filmmaker," with exceptional control over imagery, pacing, and dread. Sonny Bunch of The Bulwark argued that while the movie can be overly explicit in its themes, its emotional honesty, visual creativity, and psychological depth make it "tremendously effective," "astute," and memorable.
Owen Gleiberman of Variety highlighted Parsons's skill at creating dread through mood, sound design, and eerie visuals rather than conventional jump scares. Gleiberman drew comparisons to Eraserhead (1977), Skinamarink (2022), and The Shining (1980) based on the film's haunting use of empty spaces and dreamlike horror. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian highlighted the film's oppressive atmosphere, striking production design, and unsettling yellow-lit visuals, comparing its themes and style to Japanese horror, Severance (2022–present), and The Rehearsal (2022–present). Angie Han from The Hollywood Reporter praised Backrooms as an unsettling and immersive expansion of the universe, highlighting Parsons's use of labyrinthine spaces, sterile fluorescent lighting, and a constant sense of disorientation to build tension.
Beatrice Loayza of The New York Times says Will Soodik's script "cobbles together ideas about trauma and the mysterious workings of the unconscious, and sprinkles on some metaphors about gentrification as a repression of the past for good measure." Lex Briscuso of IGN says the film is "a truly terrifying cinematic rabbit hole that takes its audience down a twisted and dread-filled path as cerebral in its horror as it is aesthetically pleasing in its design." Ryan Lattanzio of IndieWire says Parsons and production designer Danny Vermette "have a hell of a time conjuring spatial uncanniness with images we've never before seen on the big screen."
Future
In May 2026, Parsons confirmed that he was not finished with Backrooms, and that there were already things "in the works right now". He also mentioned that the YouTube web series would continue.
