Do you remember the feeling of getting lost as a child? You make a wrong turn when you’re shopping with your parents and suddenly you’re in some room you’ve never seen before, and a moment of panic sets in? That’s sort of the feeling that Backrooms, the latest horror sensation to hit theaters, conjured for me.
Backrooms began as a 4chan post in 2019 and has grown into something of a creepypasta cult horror fable all across the internet. It originated as a single photo of a yellow-tinged room that extended into more rooms; a stuck dream incarnate. Since then, the myth has grown and grown, incorporated more pieces of lore and more discomforting images, stories, and video clips. Now, it’s a theatrical moviegoing experience directed by 20 year old Kane Parsons. He grew to internet fame after he began posting Backrooms videos to YouTube back in 2022, and now his vision has raked in millions of dollars at the box office.
Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, Backrooms is a psychological horror movie about a down-on-his-luck man who discovers the backrooms in the basement of the furniture store he owns. What begins as a simple exploration spirals into an exercise in liminal horror and a plunge into his psyche. Featuring an endless span of rooms, hallways, and psychedelic impossibilities, Backrooms features plenty of disquieting handheld camcorder footage and is heavy with the looming threat of something ominous at every turn.
2026 is shaping up to be a banner year for horror at the cinema. Movies like 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Obsession, and Send Help have been frightening and thrilling audiences for months, and now Backrooms is here to join the moment. It also might just be the start of a long and unconventional career for its wonderkid director Kane Parsons.
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