Backrooms is a 2026 American science fiction psychological horror film^[6] directed and co-scored by Kane Parsons in his feature-length directorial debut, and written by Will Soodik.^[7][8] It is based on Parsons' web series and inspired by the "Backrooms" creepypasta. In the film, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner, and Mary (Renate Reinsve), his therapist, discover a dimension of seemingly endless liminal spaces accessed through the store's basement. Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell also star.

After uploading the web series in January 2022, Parsons was approached by several studios about potentially adapting his series into a feature film. In February 2023, it was officially announced that work had begun on a film adaptation of the Backrooms based on Parsons' videos, with him also directing. Roberto Patino was initially set to write the screenplay, but was replaced by Soodik. Filming began in the summer of 2025 and concluded in August 2025.

Backrooms premiered at the Aero Theatre in Los Angeles on May 7, 2026, and was theatrically released in the United States by A24 on May 29. The film received positive reviews from critics and has grossed $262.6million worldwide, becoming A24's highest-grossing film to date and making Parsons the youngest filmmaker to reach number one at the United States box office. Backrooms is the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2026 and the second-highest-grossing horror film of 2026.

In June 1990, a researcher with the Async Research Institute, Naren Warne, is separated from his group and becomes lost in an extradimensional space known as "the Backrooms". While attempting to call for rescue, Naren is chased and attacked by an unseen entity. The film then cuts to black, revealing that it was recovered footage being watched by Async scientists on a monitor.

Clark, a failed architect who owns a struggling furniture store, attempts to cope with his alcoholism and crumbling marriage. He sees therapist Mary Kline, who is working through trauma related to the demolition of her childhood home and her agoraphobic mother's institutionalization. Sleeping at the store because of his marital problems, Clark realizes that the lights flicker mysteriously at night, and his television behaves erratically.

While checking the breaker box, Clark notices a glowing slit in a wall. Approaching it, he falls through and enters the Backrooms, a labyrinthine and chaotic expanse of dull yellow rooms, fluorescent lights, long corridors, and malformed furniture. Clark finds Naren's belongings and narrowly escapes back to the store when an unseen entity chases him. An Async scientist, Phil, watches these events on a surveillance camera. The next week, Clark tells Mary about the Backrooms but is met with skepticism.

Clark recruits his assistant manager, Kat, and her boyfriend, Bobby, to help him film the Backrooms to prove his claims. The trio enters and records their discoveries. While exploring a steeply sloped corridor, Bobby is ambushed and dragged away by an unseen entity; Clark and Kat frantically investigate and are drawn into an unexplored area where they are separated. Clark runs through various bizarre and disordered spaces, eventually coming across two other humanoid entities that chase him to a dead end. He hears Kat call out to him and sets the camera down to look for her. Something picks up the camera as Kat screams for Clark to look behind him.

Some time later, Mary receives a cryptic answering machine message from Clark, who tells her that he is staying in the Backrooms and will not return. Phil watches television with his family and recognizes Clark in a commercial for his furniture store. Mary visits the store, concerned about Clark, and enters the Backrooms herself. She finds a crude mural incorporating enigmatic text and a depiction of the entity that killed Bobby. An apparently psychotic Clark arrives; hearing an entity approaching, he tries to calm Mary before choking her unconscious.

Mary awakens tied to a chair in a space resembling a dining room occupied by Clark and three malformed, unresponsive imitations of humans. They stare impassively as Clark stabs one of them with a large knife and reveals Kat's severed head in a refrigerator. Clark demands that Mary continue their therapy sessions, but she instead scolds Clark, telling him that his wife left him for his inability to take responsibility for his failures.

Clark begins to release Mary, but is interrupted by the arrival of a towering, distorted version of Captain Clark, the furniture store's pirate mascot. Clark tries to calm the pirate monster, which suddenly attacks and kills him and then chases Mary through a succession of chaotic and surreal spaces. Cornered by the monster, she bashes it in the face using a chunk of cement from her childhood home. Their struggle triggers an Async gas trap, alerting a group of researchers in hazmat suits; the monster is subdued, and Mary is taken to their research facility.

After recovering, Mary is brought to an interrogation room where she meets Phil. He explains that Async made magnetic resonance imaging machines until they discovered the Backrooms, which have since become their primary research focus. When asked how she came across the Backrooms and what she found there, she repeats Clark's description of it as a faulty, misremembered copy of reality. Mary asks if Async will let her go, but Phil vaguely replies that the decision is not up to him. Inside the Backrooms, a series of spaces are limned by Mary's memories and trauma, ending in a loosely copied interrogation room in which a deformed simulacrum of Mary sits still and silent.

• Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark, a furniture store owner and failed architect^[9]
• Renate Reinsve as Dr. Mary Kline, Clark's therapist^[10]
• Mark Duplass as Phil, an Async scientist and Backrooms researcher^[11]
• Finn Bennett as Robert "Bobby" Franklin, Kat's boyfriend^[9]
• Lukita Maxwell as Kathrine "Kat" Taylor, Clark's employee and Bobby's girlfriend^[9]
• Avan Jogia as Naren Warne, an Async explorer of the Backrooms^[12]
• Robert Bobroczkyi as Pirate Clark, a monstrous entity resembling Clark in a pirate costume that inhabits the Backrooms^[13]
• Krista Kosonen as Nora Kline, Mary's mother^[14][15]

On January 7, 2022, Kane Parsons began uploading an anthological video series titled Backrooms onto his YouTube channel Kane Pixels, the concept being based on the internet creepypasta of the same name.^[17] When the series became viral, several studios began to show interest in adapting it into a film.^[18] In February 2023, a film adaptation was announced as a joint production between A24, Chernin Entertainment, Atomic Monster, and 21 Laps Entertainment, with Parsons directing, making it his feature-length directorial debut, and Roberto Patino writing.^[19] The film is produced by James Wan, Shawn Levy, and Osgood Perkins.^[20] Chernin Entertainment and A24 co-financed the film for under $10 million.^[21][1]

Parsons drew inspiration from the Portal video game franchise, the television series Mr. Robot (2015–2019), the films Punishment Park (1971) and One Hour Photo (2002), and the anime series Paranoia Agent (2004) for the film, as well as for his web series.^[22] Backrooms maintains a "strict continuity" with the director's YouTube web series.^[23]

In May 2025, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Cristin Milioti entered negotiations to star in the film.^[24] Ejiofor was confirmed the following month, with Will Soodik writing the latest draft. Milioti's deal ultimately fell through, and Renate Reinsve was cast in her place in June.^[25] Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell and Avan Jogia were added to the cast in July.^[12] Jogia was a fan of Parsons' original web series before he was cast. Despite his character's relatively small part, Jogia recalled he and Parsons spent extensive time discussing the lore of the film during production.^[26]

To create the liminal space environments of the Backrooms, Parsons used the 3D software Blender, with production designer Danny Vermette adapting his digital designs for physical construction.^[27][28] More than 30,000 square feet (2,800 m²) of Backrooms sets were built across four sound stages for the film, with Vermette comparing the fitting of the sets with Tetris;^[29] 37,000 square feet (3,400 m²) of wallpaper and 29,000 square feet (2,700 m²) of carpeting were used, much of it sourced locally in Canada to avoid the impact of U.S. tariffs.^[30] The production design also emphasized verticality within the sets to make actors' interactions with the environment more physically challenging.^[28] People reportedly got lost on set.^[31]

The film's spaces were designed to resemble an "architectural hell" resembling a flawed digital 3D modeling sandbox, where rendering errors—such as misaligned floors, intersecting arches, and objects clipping through walls—create an unsettling sense of unreality. The Backrooms have been described as a prism that refracts its visitors, while its entities appear less like demons than distorted "memories" of the real world, drawing comparisons to the anomalous zone in Annihilation (2018).^[32]

Principal photography began in Vancouver, Canada on July 7, 2025, under the working title of Effigy.^[33] Filming wrapped on August 14, 2025.^[34]

Edo Van Breemen and Parsons composed the score for the film.^[35] The Boards of Canada track "The Word Becomes Flesh" from their album Inferno plays during the film's end credits.^[36] The tracks "Ulterior Motives", a well-known former lostwave song, and "B1 – All that follows is true" by the Caretaker, also feature in the film.^[37]

Backrooms premiered at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica on May 7, 2026,^[38] and was released in the United States by A24 on May 29, 2026.^[39] It was released in South Korea and Italy on May 27.^[40][41]

As of June 14, 2026^[update], Backrooms has grossed $160.3million in the United States and Canada, and $102.3million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $262.6million.^[4][5]

In early May 2026, initial projections had Backrooms grossing around $20 million in its opening weekend.^[21] By the week of its release, projections had increased to $40–50million.^[3][42] The film grossed $38.4million on its first day and went on to debut to $81.5million domestically and a total of $118million worldwide, becoming A24's biggest opening weekend.^[1] In its second weekend, despite a 70% decline to $26.3 million, Backrooms became A24's highest-grossing film to date, surpassing Marty Supreme (2025), after reaching $213million worldwide.^[43]

Parsons became the youngest filmmaker at the time to reach number one at the box office with the film,^[16] topping Josh Trank's Chronicle (2012) with its previous record.^[1] Chronicle earned $22million on its opening weekend,^[44] and its director Trank, 27 years old at the time of its release, surpassed Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), with Spielberg being 28 at the time, as the best opening weekend debut for a young filmmaker.^[45]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 267 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "A startlingly assured feature debut from director Kane Parsons, Backrooms bends the liminal spaces that have haunted the internet for years into a horror film that's as mesmerizing as it is terrifying."^[46] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[47] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it a 68% positive score, with 53% saying they would definitely recommend it.^[1]

Amy Nicholson for Los Angeles Times described the film as a feature expansion of Parsons' web series, praising its unsettling visual concept but thought it less a conventional horror film and more a surreal, dreamlike experience of a moving Salvador Dalí painting. She also highlighted the performances of the cast, including Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve.^[48] Dan Bayer of Next Best Picture praised Reinsve and Ejiofor for conveying emotion through subtle acting even when the script is sparse. He also said Parsons arrived "as a fully formed filmmaker", with exceptional control over imagery, pacing, and dread.^[49] Sonny Bunch of The Bulwark argued that while the movie can be overly explicit in its themes, its emotional honesty, visual creativity, and psychological depth make it "tremendously effective", "astute", and memorable.^[50]

Owen Gleiberman of Variety highlighted Parsons' skill at creating dread through mood, sound design, and eerie visuals rather than conventional jump scares. Gleiberman drew comparisons to Eraserhead (1977), The Shining (1980), and Skinamarink (2022), based on the film's dreamlike horror and use of empty spaces.^[51] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian highlighted the film's oppressive atmosphere, striking production design, and unsettling yellow-lit visuals, comparing its themes and style to Japanese horror, Severance (2022–present), and The Rehearsal (2022–present).^[52] Angie Han from The Hollywood Reporter praised Backrooms as an unsettling and immersive expansion of the universe, highlighting Parsons' use of labyrinthine spaces, sterile fluorescent lighting, and a constant sense of disorientation to build tension.^[53]

Beatrice Loayza of The New York Times says Will Soodik's script "cobbles together ideas about trauma and the mysterious workings of the unconscious, and sprinkles on some metaphors about gentrification as a repression of the past for good measure."^[54] Lex Briscuso of IGN says the film is "a truly terrifying cinematic rabbit hole that takes its audience down a twisted and dread-filled path as cerebral in its horror as it is aesthetically pleasing in its design."^[55] Ryan Lattanzio of IndieWire says Parsons and production designer Danny Vermette "have a hell of a time conjuring spatial uncanniness with images we've never before seen on the big screen."^[56]

The Hollywood Reporter's Mia Galuppo and Aaron Couch noted the box-office success of Parsons' Backrooms and Curry Barker's Obsession as evidence of the growing influence of YouTube-born filmmakers in the horror genre. They suggested that the films' strong appeal among Generation Z audiences could encourage studios to increasingly seek talent from digital platforms, favoring low-budget, creator-driven productions.^[57] Alex Werpin from The Hollywood Reporter reported that, following the success of Backrooms, Reddit is emerging as a destination for agents, executives and studios seeking new intellectual property, talent and story ideas from online communities. Studios believe that engaging with these communities can help build awareness, generate curiosity and create stronger connections with fans.^[58]

In May 2026, Parsons confirmed that he was not finished with Backrooms and that there were already things "in the works right now". He also mentioned that the YouTube web series would continue.^[59] In early June, Deadline Hollywood reported that Parsons was already searching for a screenwriting collaborator to work with on the sequel.^[60] Parsons denied shortly after that a screenwriter was already being sought, saying he was "not sure where that got out". He also expressed interest in developing a Backrooms television series.^[61]

• Backrooms at A24 Films
• Backrooms at IMDb