Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) in 'Backrooms'
A24
In Backrooms, the most terrifying creature lurking inside the sickly yellow labyrinth might just be yourself.
An adaption of digital folklore, Backrooms is directed by YouTuber Kane Parsons, who transforms the viral creepypasta into a surreal horror film.
Backrooms delves into the mind of a furniture salesman stuck in a stagnant life, with an abrupt ending that hints at a possible sequel.
Warning—Spoilers Ahead
The entrance to the Backrooms is discovered by Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is living inside his low-budget furniture store after a brutal divorce, nursing a bitter resentment to how things have turned out.
After an illuminating conversation with his therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), it’s obvious that Clark is struggling to accept his role in the breakdown of his marriage.
Clark blames his wife for the fact that he’s selling furniture, a dispiriting role that occasionally requires him to act in corny commercials dressed as a pirate.
However, Clark finds an escape from his mundane existence after he “noclips” through the wall of the store’s lower level, exploring the Backrooms.
The Backrooms are faithfully represented here, exactly how the internet imagined, flickering fluorescent bulbs and carpets that you can practically smell through the screen.
The endless office maze is littered with random, eerie objects, often infused in the floor and walls. Everything artificial belongs here—the Backrooms absorbs tacky trophies of commercialism.
After realizing that a mysterious, violent creature stalks the corridors, Clark manages to escape, but something about the Backrooms compels him.
He returns to the otherworldly space, roping in his two employees, Bobby (Finn Bennett) and Kat (Lukita Maxwell), to accompany him and document the experience with a camera.
This is familiar territory for Parsons, who has been creating viral Backrooms videos for YouTube since 2022, and these pixelated, first-person sequences are some of the film’s most unsettling.
After a deadly encounter with the monster, the entrance to the Backrooms is discovered by Mary, who is looking for her client. She finds Clark within, and quickly learns that he has lost his mind.
Clark sits her down to a deeply unnerving “dinner,” explaining that he has come to love the Backrooms and its twisted inhabitants.
Clark forces his therapist to repeat their previous conversation, demanding that she absolve him of blame for his divorce. Instead, Mary blurts out her true feelings, blaming Clark for the sad state of his life.
The moment is interrupted by the monster, revealed to be a malformed version of Clark’s pirate persona.
Clark explains to the monster that the therapist has validated him, and the beast responds by devouring him.
Clark lays out the film's thesis during this scene, explaining that the Backrooms contain fragmented and distorted memories from the outside.
The Backrooms are the subconscious of the modern world—whoever enters will leave something of themselves behind.
In Clark’s case, the monstrous pirate represents his worst self, his stagnation and failed potential. When Clark chooses to stay in the Backrooms, he embraces denial and escapism.
As Clark notes, the inhabitants of the Backrooms don’t feel pain—they don’t even seem to be alive—yet, he envies them.
When Clark rejects the truth, forcing Mary to validate his delusions, the self-destructive circle closes and Clark is consumed by himself.
Mary flees from the terrible creature, running through increasingly distorted and dreamlike spaces, the Backrooms growing more abstract as she goes deeper.
Finally, she reaches a room full of gas canisters, rigged to activate after a cardboard cutout is knocked over. She escapes the monster, fighting it off using a memento from her traumatic childhood.
Men in hazmat suits take her away to a laboratory, where she sees the monster has been captured.
She’s interrogated by a researcher named Phil (Mark Duplass), who works for the mysterious company Async, which used to build MRI machines and now studies the Backrooms.
Phil implies that the Backrooms are a world-changing discovery, the former MRI company seemingly studying how brainwaves affect the layout of the otherworldly labyrinth.
Shots of the Backrooms, now imbued with Mary’s memories, are followed by the reveal that Mary herself has been replicated, as one of the distorted inhabitants that Clark once admired.
Mary hasn’t been saved—she seems fated to participate in Async’s experiments, doomed to return to the Backrooms to face her own trauma, and maybe, her worst self.
While A24 hasn’t officially confirmed a sequel, the film teases a larger narrative.
Speaking to Polygon, Parsons explained that Backrooms could be the first of several films.
“This film is the first part in what I would desire to be several narrative steps, in terms of approaching what I consider to be the true heart of the idea. I just don't think you could get to it in the time you have for a single movie.”
“A series would be my dream scenario, personally,” Parsons said. “I think that's the most practical way to narratively get what you want.”
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