Kane Parsons brings his internet phenomenon to the big screen with A24’s budget powers. Here’s our Backrooms review. It’s hard not to admire Kane Parsons. Taking inspiration from the 2019 creepypasta phenomenon, the guy released his own – and very good! – short film titled Backrooms (Found Footage) which gathered enough attention to turn it ... Backrooms review | The era of YouTube horror is here to stay
Kane Parsons brings his internet phenomenon to the big screen with A24’s budget powers. Here’s our Backrooms review.
It’s hard not to admire Kane Parsons. Taking inspiration from the 2019 creepypasta phenomenon, the guy released his own – and very good! – short film titled Backrooms (Found Footage) which gathered enough attention to turn it into a series of shorts and had A24 calling to make it into a feature film.
Not bad for an 18-year-old! In fact, now at 20, Parsons is A24’s youngest director and could be the youngest director to have a number one film at the box office if things work out well this weekend. It’s nice to see there’s still a willingness to support young directors’ visions and their autonomy over their own creations.
The film, then.
There is tons of lore around Backrooms and there doesn’t seem to be one simple explanation as to what it is, but thankfully, Parsons and writer Will Soodik have decided to keep things nice and simple for this 90s set film adaptation. This isn’t an origin story, it doesn’t seek to explain everything and it focuses on the feel of everything over a twist-heavy story, for better or for worse.
We’re thrust right into things from the opening moments. Shown to us in found footage, someone seems to be lost in the Backrooms, begging for their co-workers to find them. Why they’re there is a mystery but perhaps we’ll get answers later. For now, our interest has been piqued.
Then we meet Chiwetel Ejiofor’s alcoholic ottoman salesman Clark who is attending therapy sessions hosted by Mary (Renate Reinsve). Clark soon finds a door into the Backrooms inside his furniture store and begins losing himself in the strange, terrifying world of it.
I wish I could tell you more about it but in all honesty, there isn’t much more to share here unless I go into spoiler territory and explain the film’s final act. Backrooms prioritises tension over everything and Parsons sure knows how to craft it. The film relies heavily on found footage and it’s these segments where Backrooms is at its most frightening.
But it doesn’t save the film from the obvious lack of story. Ejiofor’s Clark is mostly there to either rage about his ex-wife Barbara or wander around the Backrooms, looking thoroughly fascinated. Reinsve has a more difficult job of being an afterthought in the first half of the film and then having to carry it in the second half when Clark goes missing. We also get snippets of her childhood and her troubled mother (Krista Kosonen) that bears very little weight in the grand scheme of things.
There is occasionally that nagging feeling that Backrooms is still a short film that has been stretched to 100 minutes. Despite two very talented actors, creating hues of far deeper characters than the script perhaps allows, Parsons’ focus is on what the Backrooms feels like. Is it quite enough for a feature? Maybe not, but when Backrooms works, it really works.
It definitely helps when you’ve got something as powerful as A24 backing you up. The production built over 30,000 square feet of the Backrooms as a set it and it pays off handsomely. The Backrooms feel tangible and real and it helps massively when the story wobbles. Parsons also had a wonderful support network with James Wan, Shawn Levy and Osgood Perkins as executive producers. There were nasty rumors that Backrooms was mostly directed by Perkins, but cast member Marc Duplass put a quick end to those.
Now, for the question that haunts every single horror film: is it scary?
It’s never a fair question, fear depends on what you find scary, but Backrooms is definitely effective. Its jump scares are simple, but enough to make you jump out of your seat. The vastness of the Backrooms is perhaps its most terrifying aspect, the endless corridors and rooms that seem like they could just liquify from under you any second.
Parsons has certainly proved his abilities with Backrooms and is yet another example of how Youtube is serving us a new wave of horror directors. With Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach’s Iron Lung, Curry Barker’s phenomenal Obsession and the works of the Philippou brothers, Youtube is birthing some serious talent. Backrooms would also make a great double bill with the excellent Exit 8.
2026 is shaping up to be a particularly strong year for horror. Aren’t we lucky?
Backrooms is in cinemas 29th May.
