Backrooms ★★★★★

Released: 29 May 2026

Director: Kane Parsons

Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett & Lukita Maxwell

20-year-old Kane Parsons’ earth-shattering, cosmically profound and emotionally devastating Backrooms is an entrancing concoction of labyrinthian claustrophobia and acute sensitivity. Cutting between Parsons’ masterful found-footage style camcorder photography, paired with his obscenely gifted eye for production design and unique VFX capabilities, alongside the most gorgeous textural digital photography this year, Backrooms operates in a space of its own.

Backrooms functions somewhat as a dual narrative. The wonderful Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a fortunate store manager, whose wife has recently left him due to his selfish demeanour and frankly dogmatic sensibilities. Clark feels he is always right, and in turn, has come to terms with being lonely. Mary, Clark’s therapist — who is performed astonishingly by Renate Reinsve — has had her own enduring childhood hardships, but seeks to support Clark with his isolated lifestyle. Parsons is particularly delicate in his portrayal of Mary’s youthful anguish, and how it still bleeds into her adult life.

Almost like some sort of calling one night in the basement of Clark’s furniture store, a slither of light bleeds through the white canvas wall. Clark, an ex-architect, notices this unusual anomaly causing him to no-clip into the mustard-yellow monochromatic expanse of what we know as the the backrooms. Internet myth, lore and creepy-pastas have always dominated a large subsection of digital discourse, an underbelly of anonymous threads for thought and narrative. It is fascinating because Parsons, himself, operates in this almost negative space of filmmaking. Much like the anonymous nature of the Backrooms’ origin, Parsons has created a similar manifestation in his filmmaking style. His Backrooms is such a singular vision, it is remarkably impressive.

Much like the Backrooms’ endlessness, Clark’s personality morphs throughout the narrative. Parsons utilises two distinctive formats of photography. Its opening and middle sections utilise camcorder, analogue found-footage photography, something that Parsons has deployed throughout his filmmaking career. These sequences are insanely terrifying.

Parsons has such an effective understanding of space as well as negative space. There’s a kineticism to his found-footage camcorder style, wild swooshes and cascading movements alongside a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio not only add a divine texture to the piece, but lend itself perfectly to the 1990 setting. There’s almost a signifying sense of a world, the real world as we know it, trapped in time and space. Is the Backrooms a facsimile or is it entirely operate from the world me know? This contrast with the attritional, reproduced liminal space of the backrooms itself adds only another layer to the Backrooms’ narrative diegesis. A synchronisation of immaculate attention to detail in the production design and a synth- patched warping score adds such a distinctive substance to an already exceptionally well-textured work.

The second format comes in the digital construction and composition of the world outside of the found-footage elements of the Backrooms. The Alexa 65s capturing of the American 1990s suburbia, is such a formally accomplished directorial choice. The world as we know it looks somewhat Backrooms-esque. There’s such a constructed balance and toying with audience spectatorship that comes into play here and it is all their for critical thought after the credits roll.

Without going into any more detail, what stalks the inside of the Backrooms is beautifully inventive, terrifyingly singular and, as the denouement approaches, exceptionally emotive. The greatest horror understands the complexities of human nature, on all fronts, and Parsons leads the charge here with a clear plethora of sophistication. By the time Mary enters the Backrooms it is entirely evident that Kane Parsons is such a proficient, intricate craftsman delivering a certified face-melting directorial debut.

The walls around us are breathing, the replication has already happened, and despite the cascading, half-rendered world closing in, a warm and sensitive glow bleeds through Parsons’ canvas. There is absolutely no question that what Kane Parsons has done with Backrooms is nothing short of phenomenal.