Movie Review: BACKROOMS

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: May 29th, 2026 / 09:42 PM

Rating: R
Stars: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell
Writer: Will Soodik, based on the YouTube series by Kane Parsons
Director: Kane Parsons
Distributor: A24
Release Date: May 29, 2026

While it was made now (2025-2026), BACKROOMS is reminiscent of choose-your-own-interpretation science-fiction films that were most prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s. Splitting the difference, BACKROOMS is set in June 1990 in Santa Clara, California (just north of Los Angeles County). Then as now, it’s a relatively quiet area.

The film starts as with video cam footage shot by an uneasy man. He’s making his way through what looks like an office building, with yellow-wallpapered suites mostly devoid of furniture. We and he detect that someone or something is in there with him. He pleads for unseen comrades to find him and come to his aid.

Then we’re with Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who runs the discount furniture store Captain Clark’s Ottoman Empire in a strip mall. Clark drinks, has a lot of bills, and has been living in the shop since his wife kicked him out.

Clark is in therapy with Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), an author of successful self-help books. She seems sincere in her efforts to help Clark, who has anger as well as alcohol and financial issues. Clark has been trained as an architect and clearly resents what he’s doing for a living.

The store has been having some inexplicable electrical issues, with lights flickering on and off. When Clark goes to investigate the breaker box in the basement, he finds he can go through the wall into the empty office surroundings we’ve seen before.

There are empty rooms, there are rooms with piles of furniture in the middle, there are rooms with writing on the walls, there are floors made of sand, there are ALICE IN WONDERLAND-style doors of various sizes.

Eventually, Mary, plus Clark’s two employees, Bobby (Finn Bennett) and Kat (Lukita Maxwell), become caught up in the exploration as well. Things on the other side of the wall become increasingly strange.

Based on a series of shorts available on YouTube by BACKROOMS director Kane Parsons and written by Will Soodik, the movie deals with liminal space, defined in architecture (per Google) as an area meant only for passing through – hallways, corridors, etc. (Clark’s chosen profession isn’t random.) What if we were stuck in them? Moreover, as one character posits, what if places remember people, rather than the other way around, but don’t remember them accurately? What would that do to the people?

These notions are heady and fascinating. But BACKROOMS doesn’t necessarily dramatize them as well as perhaps is possible. It can be argued that the subject material defies conventional storytelling, and that’s fair.

On the flip side, when something that asks “What if?” is presented as a narrative, it can likewise be posited that the filmmakers might want to offer a few potential answers.

Even if we’re trying to give ourselves over to the BACKROOMS experience, there’s only so much wandering around without incident that this reviewer, at least, can take. Ejiofor is one of those actors who could be riveting in that proverbial reading of the phone book, but he’s only allowed so much variation of reaction to what he encounters as he goes from room to room to room. Again, the point may be that our reactions as humans become numb as we are subjected to these liminal spaces.

Ejiofor is excellent as the distressed Clark, as is Reinsve as a woman trying to keep her own demons at bay. The two have a terrific scene together near the end. Bennett adeptly conveys youthful curiosity and Maxwell ably puts forth anxiety. Mark Duplass makes his character properly ambivalent.

The “backrooms” are unsettling and depressing, even without the things lurking within it. So, for that matter, is Clark’s forlorn store. One of the many, many conversations BACKROOMS may spark is what’s worse: a place – or a life – that cannot fulfill its purpose or one that has no purpose at all?

BACKROOMS is conceptually marvelous, with multiple layers of meaning. But, for those who are not entirely caught up in its melancholic spell, it’s also slow going at times.

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