Images: A24 (via a24films.com)
I finally watched the Backrooms movie, and I've been side-eyeing empty hallways ever since.
For context: A24 gave a 20-year-old YouTuber under $10 million, and he handed them the biggest opening in studio history — $81.5 million domestic — on the way to nearly $400 million worldwide. That's A24's highest-grossing film ever, full stop. Kane Parsons, aka Kane Pixels, is now the youngest director ever to top the box office, and honestly, good. The internet raised this kid right.
A YouTube kid built 30,000 square feet of dread
If you somehow missed it: the Backrooms started as a 2019 4chan creepypasta — endless yellow rooms, wet carpet, fluorescent hum — and Parsons turned it into a found-footage YouTube series in 2022 that scared the absolute life out of everyone. The movie keeps strict continuity with his videos, which already makes it the most faithful internet-to-Hollywood adaptation I've seen. They built over 30,000 square feet of yellow hallways for real — people reportedly got lost on set — and it shows. The place looks like a 3D render with a memory problem: wrong angles, doors that shouldn't connect, rooms that feel copied-and-pasted by something that never saw a real house. Parsons has promised it won't hand you concrete answers, and reader, he keeps that promise.
Ejiofor carries the yellow
The story, spoiler-free: a struggling furniture store owner finds a doorway to the Backrooms in his basement, and his therapist gets pulled into the mystery with him. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the owner as a man slowly realizing his life was already a maze before the literal one showed up, and Renate Reinsve matches him beat for beat. There's also a shadowy research outfit — Async — watching all of it through cameras, which is somehow the scariest part. Not the monster. The paperwork behind the monster.
Masterpiece, or 90 minutes of wallpaper?
Here's the honest gripe section, because you deserve one. Critics are at 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences gave it a B− CinemaScore, and it dropped 70% in weekend two. Some people walked out calling it a masterpiece; others called it very expensive wallpaper. The movie deliberately refuses to explain itself, and there's a stretch in the middle where that refusal goes from atmospheric to okay but give me SOMETHING. I get both camps. If the vibe doesn't grab you, it's just yellow rooms with good acting. And yes, part of me misses the lo-fi original — a phone camera and Blender dread you watched at 2am hits different than a $10 million soundstage. The budget bought craftsmanship, though, and mercifully not safety.
So... sequel?
Parsons says there's stuff "in the works," he's floated a TV series, and his YouTube series is still going. The Backrooms isn't a place that lets you leave.
My rating: 8/10
Genuinely unsettling, two performances carrying a movie about empty rooms, and one point docked for answering nothing on purpose. Bring a friend who's scared of IKEA.