There has been a lot of buzz about A24’s latest entry into the cinematic horror sweepstakes, where it seems every weekend a new YouTuber or previously unknown young filmmaker becomes the next big thing. Coming off self-financed YouTuber Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach’s $50 million-grossing early-2026 success Iron Lung, and in the last couple of weeks an even bigger hit for Curry Barker in the $1 million-budgeted smash Obsession, we now have 20-year-old wunderkind Kane Parsons.

He has taken his viral YouTube series of shorts, The Backrooms, and expanded the idea into his first feature film. Actually, the kid was 17 when he embarked on this terrifying series that now has a following numbering in the millions and is leading to big box office expectations for A24’s launch this weekend.

Add directors like Osgood Perkins, whose Longlegs shook up the industry (he also is a producer of Backrooms), and Weapons and Barbarian director Zach Cregger, and you have a new era of the golden boys of horror upon us. You definitely can count Parsons in on the level of what this crowd has been creating because Backrooms is a movie so friggin’ creepy and inventive you won’t be able to get it out of your head. It’s like The Twilight Zone meets The Shining meets Blue Velvet meets Twin Peaks meets Severance meets Blair Witch Project meets The Silence of the Lambs, then throw in a dozen other weirder-than-weird movies that mess with your mind and you might get the idea of what you are in for.

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The David Lynch influence is especially all over this thing, but what Parsons and his screenwriter Will Soodik have concocted is a beast all to its own in the end, a movie not quite like any other, and that is what will make it fly. If you are already one of the flock driven to Parsons’ YouTube iteration and various installments, you are a step ahead, and the fan service he has included will be a gift. The good news is, if you are like me and never have experienced Backrooms in any form before, I can happily report it doesn’t matter. I was with this thing all the way.

The sheer cinematic sophistication of this feature adaptation of the YouTube series should not be surprising when you consider some of its many producers are the likes of James Wan, Shawn Levy, Perkins, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping and more. Clearly, A24 and its production partners have given Parsons some heavyweight support and guidance in realizing a movie version of a cerebral idea that works on its own terms and could spark a franchise. After all, it is the walls and the doors that are the real stars here.

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In terms of humans Chiwetel Ejiofor is not a bad get at all for what turns into one of his most memorable roles as Clark. He runs a furniture store — an “ottoman empire,” as it were — and fronts corny TV ads as a pirate character selling the discounts. He also has a shrink, Mary (Renate Reinsve), to whom he whines a lot about his life and various woes. It is not long, though, before we get to the main event, when he finds he can walk right through the walls of his store, landing on the other side, and into a rabbit hole of bizarre endless walls and hallways of every shape and length bathed in yellow fluorescent light.

Has he wandered into a Kafkaesque nightmare? Not at first, when this bizarre occurrence is fairly easy to get out of. He tells Mary all about it, even as she looks at him like he’s lost his mind. His obsession with entering this otherworldly existence within his store becomes almost comical as he enlists his employee Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) to come join him and bring their camera to film it all. They do, but ultimately this journey gets way too weird and dangerous as it takes a very dark turn when they travel room to stranger room, up and down, door to door within a never-ending maze. Clark seems to be going mad, and coming out of her own dreams of her tortured childhood, Mary comes to investigate.

It is best to leave it there and let the audience jump in to experience and interpret it for all its worth. This is a visually stunning nightmare, and props must be given to cinematographer Jeremy Cox and production designer Danny Vermette for a dazzling magical mystery tour through this prison with no exit, a weirder wonderland than any Alice ever visited, spare but with mementos from past lives now distorted and twisted, something out of our dreams and somehow brought to vivid life on the big screen.

Big props also to editor Greg Ng, VFX supervisor Edward Douglas and the appropriate electronic score from Parsons and Edo van Breeman that accompanies this bizarro land full of constant noises that offer clues for what lies within these walls and behind these doors — or not. We don’t really know. (The sound design also is exceptional.)

Ejiofor really digs in and runs with this role, and you can see why he signed up. The same goes for Reinsve, who has some choice scenes as she verbally blasts her patient. Also making an impression towards the end is Mark Duplass as Phil, a scientist from the MRI company Async (fans of the series will recognize it), who now morphing into one trying to assess what the meaning of all this is. He isn’t quite sure himself, only that within these confines may lie the greatest discovery in the history of mankind.

So what is the meaning? Figure it out for yourselves. Meanwhile, enjoy the scenery.

Producers are James Wan, Michael Clear, Roberto Patino, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohan, Dan Levine, Osgood Perkins, Chris Ferguson, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping and Kori Adelson.

Title: Backrooms
Distributor: A24
Director: Kane Parsons
Screenwriter: Will Soodik
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell
Rating: R
Running time: 1 hr 50 mins