Backrooms Review & Interview

After a therapist's patient disappears into a dimension beyond reality, she must venture into the unknown to save him.

Backrooms, Kane Parsons

A failed architect turned furniture salesman, Clark, is living in and out of alcoholism, therapy, and career decline, while sleeping in his storeroom following his failed marriage. One night, he strangely discovers a network of rooms, which defies every sense of space and logic, luring him to explore more. Born from the Youtube series of “The Backrooms”, Backrooms (2026) is a genre-defying and sophisticatedly authentic horror, exploring themes of trauma and self-reckoning through the revolutionary craft of Kane Parsons. 

★★★★1/2

Release Date: May 29th 2026
Director(s): Kane Parsons
Producer(s): James Wan, Michael Clear, Roberto Patino, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, Osgood Perkins, Chris Ferguson, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, Kori Adelson
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass Cinematographer: Jeremy Cox
Distributor: A24 Runtime: 110 minutes

TNBFC later sat down with director Kane Parsons in an international junket. We asked Kane what he thinks attracts the audience to Backrooms, and what was it like to work with Chiwetel Ejiofor.

TNBFC: Hi Kane, William Adams from The New Black Film Collective in London. On that the idea of space, I thought it was hauntingly attractive and there's something really hypnotic about it. I just wanted to understand both from Backrooms in terms of the series and from the development into the film, and also what you're expecting from the audience, what do you think attracts people, whether it be the audience and cast alike, to the liminal spaces and this sort of distorted familiarity of Backrooms. Thank you.

Kane Parsons: I think it very much almost lures people in for all the things that can be said about the more sort of dark and intellectual industrial aspects of it. I think those are inherently under the surface. The interesting part that gets people in is the link to the familiar, for me at least and a lot of people in my same demographic, and I think outside of it too. But there is a catering to early 2000s and and '90s sensibilities within Backroom's discourse. But there is very much a notion of looking at these spaces like what the human mind does to store locations, you know, the places that you may not have been for a long long time, places that may have been torn down that don't exist anymore. But the evolutionary need to map spaces in our heads and and whatnot, those bones still remain and they're kind of discarded in a pile somewhere, and they float around and change a little bit. But it's almost, I think, people are responding to the sort of feeling of being able to return to a world that doesn't exist anymore, a world that they are no longer in direct alignment with, something from something from their childhood really. So there's definitely a nostalgic element. But I think it's a nostalgic element in such a way that it's nostalgia for the places, and for the buildings, and for the non-human elements, which is not usually as commonly spoken about.

TNBFC: What was it like to work with Chiwetel? And if there's insight on creating Clark's character together? Thank you.

Kane Parsons: Yeah Chiwetel is great. I really enjoyed the first time we met. I am familiar with his work and I love his sensibilities so this wasn't surprising. We talked about this one video I had done; the focuses on the fluorescent lights in the building, and taking apart the components ,and the level of detail that goes into the science fiction and fundamental world aspect of it. That is not the point of this film, by any means, and it is not the most underlying element there. But I think he really had a desire and an excitement about not necessarily going deep, because you need to be able to hold most of the space open for the inner psychology of Clark and his character, who is obviously at the end of a thread in life, and is constantly desperately pulling backwards into the past, thinking that he can find some kind of solace in thinking he had a choice at some point, or thinking about all these things that kind of screwed him over. But I think really having an appreciation for just the mechanics of the film was exciting. Yeah, I think it was a great collaboration.

Backrooms out in UK Cinemas from Friday, 29 May 2026.