Imagine being trapped inside a place nobody is supposed to notice: a deserted office floor, an empty furniture showroom, a corridor that stretches just a little too far. Now imagine it never ends.
That is the unnerving premise of Backrooms, Kane Parsons' feature adaptation of the internet horror phenomenon that has fuelled countless nightmares since first appearing online in 2022.
What might have become little more than an expanded ‘creepypasta’ emerges instead as a frightening film about people lost inside spaces that seem built from memory itself.
Set in California in the early 1990s, the film centres on Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Once an architect, he now manages a struggling furniture store with the unfortunate name Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire. The business is so empty that Clark often sleeps among the display beds. His marriage has collapsed. He drinks too much. His therapy sessions have become exercises in complaint rather than reflection.
Long before anything supernatural enters the picture, there is already a sense that Clark is stuck in a maze of his own making.
The discovery that changes everything arrives almost casually. While wandering through the basement of the store, Clark encounters a section of wall he can simply walk through. On the other side lies the Backrooms: a vast network of impossible spaces hidden behind reality. Hallways lead nowhere. Offices stretch endlessly into the distance. Familiar environments appear reconstructed from faulty memories. The deeper Clark ventures, the more unsettling the labyrinth becomes.
Parsons wisely understands that the concept's appeal has never depended on elaborate mythology. The Backrooms are frightening because they feel oddly familiar. Most people have experienced some version of these spaces: the deserted office after hours, the forgotten corner of a shopping centre, the anonymous corridors of commercial buildings where every turn looks identical to the last. Parsons takes that faintly uncomfortable sensation and expands it into a waking nightmare.
The production design by Danny Vermette is extraordinary. Every room feels meticulously considered, balancing realism and abstraction in equal measure. Fluorescent lights cast a sickly yellow glow across endless corridors and abandoned interiors. Entire environments seem suspended outside time. Some resemble office complexes, others suburban homes or retail spaces, yet none feel entirely real.
Working alongside cinematographer Jeremy Cox, Parsons develops a visual language that thrives on stillness and uncertainty. He is less interested in showing audiences what lurks in the darkness than in forcing them to stare into empty space and wonder whether something is already there.
That restraint proves one of the film's greatest strengths.
Many contemporary horror films operate on a rhythm of setup and payoff, building scenes around inevitable jump scares. Backrooms often moves differently. It allows tension to accumulate gradually. Characters spend long stretches simply exploring, listening, waiting. Empty hallways become threatening. Doorways become ominous. The film terror is not in sudden movement but in the possibility that nothing may happen at all.
The sound design plays an enormous role in creating that atmosphere. The constant hum of fluorescent lighting becomes a source of anxiety in itself, while Parsons and composer Edo Van Breemen's score drifts almost imperceptibly through scenes like a distant signal leaking through the walls.
Together, the visuals and sound create a persistent sense of unease that rarely lets up.
The film's emotional core comes from Clark's relationship with his therapist, Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve). Mary is wrestling with ghosts of her own, particularly memories of an abusive childhood that continue to shape her adult life. When circumstances draw her into the Backrooms as well, the film begins to suggest that these impossible spaces may be more than a supernatural anomaly. They seem connected to memory, regret and the stories people tell themselves about who they are.
Parsons never pushes those ideas too aggressively, which is largely to the film's benefit. However, there are moments when the screenplay appears eager to decode its own mythology when it would be stronger simply allowing the uncertainty to linger. It is the film's only significant weakness.
Even so, Backrooms remains a remarkable achievement, particularly for a first feature.