Few horror concepts have exploded in popularity over the last decade quite like the Backrooms currently is. What started as a simple internet image evolved into a modern urban legend, fueled by endless theories, found-footage videos, and collective imagination. That popularity comes with its own challenge: everyone has a different idea of what makes The Backrooms scary in the first place.
For the most part, Backrooms understands that.
What impressed me most is how effectively the film captures the oppressive atmosphere that made the concept resonate online. Director Kane Parsons has a real eye for environmental horror, creating spaces that feel both familiar, yet completely wrong at the same time. Endless hallways, humming fluorescent lights, empty rooms that seem to stretch forever… it’s the kind of setting that immediately puts you on edge before anything even happens.
The film is at its strongest when it simply lets these spaces exist. Parsons wisely leans into his found-footage roots, allowing the environment itself to become the spectacle. The feeling of isolation, uncertainty, and quiet dread is often more effective than any creature or explanation the film eventually introduces. Like the best interpretations of The Backrooms mythology, it understands that what we don’t know is often far scarier than what we do. I find it similar to a childhood nightmare where something is in your house, you don’t know where it is, and you don’t know how to get out.
The performances help ground the experience as well. Chiwetel Ejiofor does a strong job navigating a character who is constantly shifting between difficult patient, frustrated business owner, and obsessive Backrooms believer. He’s tasked with carrying a lot of the film’s emotional weight, and for the most part he succeeds. That said, the emotional side of the story never fully clicked for me. The relationship between Clark and Mary feels distant, which makes sense given their patient-therapist dynamic, but that distance never really evolves into something deeper. There are moments that hint at stronger emotional connections underneath the surface, but the script never quite develops them enough for the film’s bigger emotional swings to land as hard as they should.
I felt similarly about Mary’s backstory. The film introduces several flashbacks that suggest a richer history and deeper trauma, but they end there. In a strange way, that’s almost a compliment to the performance because I found myself wanting to learn more about her. The movie simply never digs as deeply into those ideas as I hoped it would and that’s where my biggest conflict with Backrooms comes from.
I genuinely enjoyed the movie. I was engaged the entire time, I fell for the atmosphere, and there are sequences that absolutely work. Yet the more I’ve thought about it afterward, the more I’ve found myself focusing on what could have pushed it from very good to truly great. Maybe that’s because the film plants so many intriguing questions. Maybe it’s because some character threads feel like they’re leading somewhere bigger. Or maybe it’s because the mystery itself is so compelling that I wanted the movie to explore just a little more without overexplaining everything.
Backrooms is absolutely a good film. In some moments, it’s a genuinely great one. The atmosphere is exceptional, the environmental horror works, and Parsons proves he has a remarkable understanding of tension and visual storytelling. I just don’t think it fully reaches the masterpiece status that some early reactions have attached to it.
The Backrooms has always been a concept built around mystery, uncertainty, and unanswered questions. Backrooms delivers enough of those qualities to make the experience memorable, even if I ultimately found myself more fascinated by its potential than completely overwhelmed by its execution.
Have you seen it yet? Are you a fan of this movie? Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Cheers,
Matt.
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