A One Mann’s Movies review of “Backrooms”. (2026, 4.5*, 15).
Having enjoyed the very similar looking “Exit 8” at the London Film Festival last year, I was very much looking forward to seeing what Backrooms would be like. I was really not prepared for just how mind-scrambling this film was going to be. Still, 24 hours later, I am struggling to fully explain what happened in the second half. And as for the final shot of the film, my mind has officially melted.
After the extraordinary success of “Obsession“, made for less than a million pounds and now having topped – I just checked – $150 million, this is yet another example of where the movie business should increasingly be going. Although A24 gave the 19-year-old (NINETEEN YEAR-OLD!!) Kane Parsons 10 times “Obsession“‘s budget, it has already made $118m since opening, becoming A24’s biggest opening and making Parsons the youngest filmmaker to reach number one at the American box office.
Take that, big-budget-blockbusters!
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is the manager of a run-down and failing furniture store with a piratical theme. He is however deeply depressed after a marital breakdown and is having analysis with his shrink Mary (Renate Reinsve). One evening, he finds light shining through a crack in the wall and is amazed to be able to travel through the wall into a seemingly endless labyrinth of corridors.
Certification:
UK: 15; US: R. (From the BBFC website: “Strong language, violence, injury detail, horror.”)
Talent:
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, Robert Bobroczkyi
Directed by: Kane Parsons.
Written by: Will Soodik & Kane Parsons.
Running Time: 1h 50m.
Review:
Positives:
- First and foremost, the production design on this one is simply EXTRAORDINARY! Whilst I wondered if the set had been digitally rendered, it turns out “no”! Google AI reports that Backrooms was created for real. The production team physically built a massive set spanning 30,000 square feet across four soundstages. The crew used 32,000 square feet of custom-printed wallpaper and 27,000 square feet of carpet to achieve the look. The maze-like environment was so confusing to shoot in and so convoluted that cast and crew members actually got lost and needed physical maps to navigate the stages! The different rooms are like some drug-fuelled fever-dream or a mad fairground ‘house-of-fun’: environments that just make you gasp with the creativity employed. Many of the rooms have furniture or fittings from the store ‘above’ which are either fused together or sinking, bizarrely, into the carpet. Others are fitted out like a beachside resort or conservatory. Others have horribly constricting passages leading to a tiny door, sometimes with multiple handles, like some perverse Alice in Wonderland creation.
- Grounding all of this bizarre environment are Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve.
- Ejiofor seems to be making really intelligent film choices lately, moving from box-office popcorn movies like “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” to intellectual mystery films like (my 3rd favourite film from last year), “Life of Chuck“. We are very much into ‘Chuck’ territory with this one. Ejiofor plays the confused everyman superbly in the first two reels before things go sideways in the last reel. An ‘eating’ scene in the third reel is an acting tour de force.
- Renate Reinsve of course made a splash at the Oscar nominations for “Sentimental Value” (and before that “The Worst Person in the World”, which I have STILL to see). This is, I think, her first “non-Scandi” film and I was so impressed by her performance. I hadn’t actually recognised it as her in the film so as I was straining to see who played Mary it was an “OH! Of course” moment in the end titles.
- There are also some solid supporting performances. Mark Duplass (who I know best as the harassed TV producer Chip Black from “The Morning Show”) playing Phil, a sort of ‘Dharma Initiative’ character (there is a lot of “Lost”-type vibes about this film). Also impressive again is Lukita Maxwell as Clark’s employee Kat, who shows commendable (and sensible) hesitancy in progressing into the Twilight Zone. Maxwell was one of the best things about the lacklustre AI thriller “afAId“: she played Iris, the teen with the leaked nudes on the web.
- The script, by director Nate Parsons and Will Soodik (who has episodes of “Homeland” and “Westworld” on his CV), is masterly in giving you the creeps rather than hitting you with jump scares. It shows you the mere essence of movement around corners. There is of course a Minotaur in the maze, and we do get to eventually see it: an effective reveal, realized physically, rather than through CGI, by the giant form of Robert Bobroczkyi.
- Above all, the script leads you into a very confusing final reel that saps your mind’s ability to fully understand it and leaves you without explanation. If you think you have got some rational explanation for it all, the final shot of the film suddenly whips that rug from under your feet in the most wonderful style.
- The music score by Kane Parsons and Edo Van Breemen is also terrific: spooky, unnerving and unsettling.
Negatives:
- Many viewers will, I think, hate not understanding what happens and why. I’ve tried to document my own thoughts in a “Spoiler section” below the trailer. But it still feels like I’m grasping at straws.
Summary Thoughts:
The trail of first-rate horror films continues unabated. Ever since 2022’s “Talk to Me” saw the Youtuber-Philippou brothers break out a low-budget horror into big-bucks distribution, the huge horror-productions (like the recent “Mummy” reboot and “The Bride“) have been losing ground to these little indie nuggets. It wouldn’t surprises me to find “Backrooms”, “Obsession“, “Undertone” and “Exit 8” in my Top 20 for the year this year.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer for the film is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HjdiohVOik.
Spoiler Section:
Don’t read past this point if you’ve not seen the movie.
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NO, SERIOUSLY!
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What’s it all about, Alfie?
The film is clearly about mental health and, as it turns out, the fraying mental health of Ejiofor’s Clark. As Mary describes in one of her sessions:
We all have our loops. Our habits. Behaviours that keep us walking in circles. Reaching for the same solutions over and over again. Thinking each time will take you somewhere new, but they don’t. And still, it’s the neural pathway of least resistance. A path you made. It’s the one that kept you safe when you were a child. You learned to push people away before they could hurt you. And now, as an adult, you’re still stuck right where you started. Alone.
The Backrooms almost seems like a metaphor for Clark’s disturbed brain: a place in which he ultimately seems to be far more comfortable, in perfect control and in splendid isolation, than he does in the real world.
But Mary also has a troubled mind, haunted as she is with her childhood memories of her mentally unstable and ultimately sectioned mother. (A scene where her childhood home slowly degrades through different falling ‘frames’ (like the Film 4 logo) was brilliantly done, reminding me of one of those series of pictures where an AI is asked to render the same photo hundreds of times.)
When Mary enters the maze and meets its horrors, it’s almost like she is creating the ‘Dharma’-like scientists as a way to rationalize the unexplainable with her the science side of her brain. The reality is perhaps the one reflected in the disturbing final shot of the film: Mary, trapped as one of the distorted characters in Clark’s mind, perhaps the subject of a late-night-blancmange snack for Clark when he gets peckish!
I really don’t know! Please comment if you want to try and rationalise it any better than I can!
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