First, let’s get one thing straight: Backrooms is definitely one of the strongest horror movies of the year. YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Kane Parsons’ cinematic debut features an impressive command over tone, tension, storylines, and fear factor galore. At only 20 years old, the director has more than left his mark on the genre. Plus, thanks to its stellar cast — Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, in particular, throw their entire being into escaping the liminal space — Backrooms gives us a horror film that transcends its origins as a mere Internet mythos adaptation.

But I worry that we’re making the film out to be the second coming of cinema, when it’s meant to just be a good, scary horror movie. 

As of writing, Backrooms has just wrapped up its opening weekend in the United States and is now beginning its theatrical rollout in the Philippines. The headlines surrounding it are nothing short of hyperbolic — horror veterans Jason Blum and James Wan are lauding it for “saving the industry,” reports show that it’s breathed a second, Gen Z-ified life into cinemas, and the big kicker is that it’s already earned $144 million globally to date (with no signs of plateauing any time soon). 

The same media frenzy also surrounds fellow YouTuber Curry Barker’s horror offering, Obsession, but whether it’s because the romantic horror was released a few weeks earlier or because Parsons’ rise to fame was so unexpectedly lucrative, Backrooms has become the main topic for diehard supporters, horror fans, and slightly perplexed moviegoers who were unaware of Parsons and his take on the urban legend. 

Does ‘Backrooms’ Actually Deliver on the Hype?

A bit of lore for those unaware: the concept of the Backrooms existed long before Parsons. An eerie image of empty yellow hallways began floating around the Internet in the early aughts, quickly spawning a sea of Creepypasta stories, 4chan forums, and Reddit threads speculating on the idea of an alternate dimension that ordinary people could fall (or “noclip,” if we’re being scientific) into if they weren’t careful. 

In 2022, Parsons started making Backrooms-inspired YouTube videos, many of which followed a simple storyline: someone, usually conveniently equipped with a video camera, noclips into the rooms and wanders around in search of an exit, only to discover that they’re not the only one stuck in the liminal space.

Parsons’ videos always played with the found footage format, and he brings that disturbing aesthetic to his full-length feature. The best parts of Backrooms are when we get to see the hallways and office floors through the eyes of a grainy, blurry camera lens. Parsons’ protagonists move slowly through the rooms, and so much tension is built in every bump, zoom-in, and pan that the camera makes. When the chasing finally starts, we can’t help but scream to the rhythm of the camera shaking up and down as the dimension’s big bads draw closer and closer. 

Part of me wishes that Parsons had simply stayed in the world of found footage, because it’s clear that this was where he was having the most fun in the film. Exploring the Backrooms is already a horrific idea on its own, and Parsons added so many subtle scares for the camera to catch (and for his protagonists to miss) that a Blair Witch Project-esque version of the movie wouldn’t have been a bad idea. 

But Backrooms is far from the perfect horror movie (and it’s most certainly not “rewriting” the horror genre, as some may suggest). Our main protagonists — sad furniture store owner Clark (Ejiofor) and his therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Reinsve) — are dramatic, yes, and the moments they share onscreen are the most emotionally charged of the film. But we either spend too much time with them (in the case of Clark) or too little overall (as we did with Mary), and it can leave their character arcs feeling a little lopsided by the final act of the film. There are a number of moving parts to Backrooms, and Parsons seemed to struggle keeping all of them afloat. 

There’s no denying that Parsons’ Backrooms will most likely become a classic contemporary horror film (or, at the very least, costume fodder for the next few Halloweens). What’s more, the fact that this is his directorial debut as A24’s youngest filmmaker, combined with the rising box office sales, makes the feature all the more impressive. 

But it’s also important to remember that Backrooms was never meant to be the giant, money-making blockbuster it’s being touted to be. “I [made] it because I [wanted] to make it,” Parsons said of his movie in an interview with Variety, “not because it’s just a job for me to do. The specifics of it matter to me.”

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