Film Review: Backrooms

Backrooms
Director: Kane Parsons
A24 Films, North Road Films, Atomic Monster
In Theaters: 05.29.2025

There is no film niche more vapid than independent horror. It’s the genre of the quick buck. This is sad because it’s the art form of the proletariat. Working stiffs make independent horror, and great artists have been born from it, but studios like Blumhouse are a great big coffee stain on the award-winning napkin. Backrooms was an eye-rolling announcement. It felt like a sort of pocket stuffer. “Shudder will probably pick up the Sirenhead film,” I thought. However, I’m happy to report that it’s actually pretty good!

Backrooms follows failed furniture store owner Carl (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Children of Men, 13 Years a Slave), whose investigation of his bloated power bill leads to the discovery of a crack between atoms that slips him into an infinite, nonsensical labyrinth that sometimes resembles an office building. When he goes missing, his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value, The Worst Person in the World), goes looking for him.

Backrooms’ strength is in its scale. The sets are appropriately expansive – sprawling and beautifully broken. Random assortments of furniture and street signs clip into the walls and floors of rooms that impossibly feed back into themselves.

There’s a roughly twenty minute sequence between the second and third acts that I will happily consider the greatest found footage horror I’ve ever seen. A brilliant one-shot that blends practical and digital effects seamlessly, with moments of genuine terror that shot down my spine.

Lenses are wide – even the most average of shots feel uncanny and uncomfortable. No corner of the immaculate sets are hidden, yet they remain elusive.

That said, the script is straight toast with no butter. Deeply shallow characters make the establishing and final acts feel sluggish and aimless, nearly blending itself into the indie-horror slop, betraying its creative filmmaking choices and aesthetics. Reinsve’s character is particularly toast — maybe even bread. She’s underdeveloped for the sake of mystery, but she’s given nothing identifiable. Ejiofor’s character is much better, maybe even buttered toast at times, but his monologues towards the end ruin all intrigue.

Maybe Ejiofor’s character is carried by Ejiofor. He’s unbelievable in Backrooms. He sells the least interesting dialogue and character arc as best as he can, and it’s truly impressive. Reinsive is all right — kind of boring. Her lack of character leaves her with nothing except running and looking convincingly scared, even if the Norwegian accent slips out.

To reduce director Kane Parsons to his age is a disservice to his talent. Yes, he is twenty years old, but he is genuinely very good at building horror. Maybe his characters are suffering, but that can be remedied with time. He’s only going to keep getting better.

As it stands, Parsons’ debut film does feel amateur, but underneath that is something to keep your eye on. It may be a trend film, but Backrooms is a lot of fun and impressive and even thought-provoking at its surrealistic best. —B. Allan Johnson

Read more film reviews from B. Allan Johnson: 
Film Review: The Bride!
Film Review: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie

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