Backrooms (2026) Review

https://youtu.be/0HjdiohVOik?is=JBFGbfy0RFuPpl_o

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

When you find a rabbit hole, there’s no guarantee in satisfaction knowing how far it goes.


PLOT


Inspired by a fictional creepy-pasta that became a web series created by Kane Pixels, 2026’s Backrooms takes place in the 1990s and begins showing the Async Research Institute study a labyrinthine extraterrestrial space containing a chaotic expense of yellow rooms, fluorescent lights, long corridors and malformed furniture. The scientists look through footage from one of their explorers, Naren (Avan Jogia), being chased by an unseen entity when getting separated from his group. Some time later, someone unrelated to Async finds it as well, failed architect turned furniture store owner Clark; The store is called “Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire”. Coping a break up with his wife, he divulges in alcoholism and sees a therapist named Mary Kline, whose also coping with her own past trauma, having grown up with an agoraphobic mother; Her trauma has slowly resumed following the demolition of her childhood home. When taking up residence in the furniture store one night, following a commercial shoot with his assistant manager Kat (Lukita Maxwell) & her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett), Clark starts noticing flickering lights and the television erratically functioning. Checking the breaker box would lead to a glowing slit into one of the walls in the basement, thus unintentionally falling into the labyrinthine. He explores for a while to the point of uncovering Naren’s belongings and would soon leave when hearing something pursue him; Fellow Async member Phil would watch him via surveillance camera. Clark would tell Mary of his experience to the point of showing blueprints he designed based on what he remembers. Because she doesn’t believe him, he vows to get proof of his discovery. So he gets Kat & Bobby involved to document everything, but it would soon become all the more dangerous when the latter is pulled from a steeply slowed corridor by another unseen entity. Clark & Kat do run away when it follows them, but they get separated. Through Clark’s perspective, he is chased to a dead end by humanoid entities. He ends up reaching a wall where Kat sees him on the other side but he can’t see her. As they try to figure out how to meet on another side, something takes Bobby’s camera from Clark. Time would pass again and by the time Phil recognizes Clark from one of his commercials, Mary gets a cryptic message from him claiming he’s going to stay where he is. Worried for his well being, she goes to the store and enters the dimension as well. She does find Clark only for him to knock her unconscious before being captured by one of the entities. When waking up, she’s tied to a chair and finds herself in a space resembling a dining room. Clark introduces her to imitations of people that are edible of white substance and reveals Kat’s head in a fridge. He gives her a red wig to continue their roleplay exercise like in past therapy sessions, but she refuses and instead tells him he should take responsibility for his failures. He chooses to let her go just before being eaten by his own doppelgänger resembling the store’s pirate mascot he dressed as for the commercial. His doppelgänger bites him to death and then decides to chase Mary throughout the dimension until reaching a flawed replica of the store. She defends herself with a concrete memento of her childhood long enough for the creature to be subdued by Async agents via gas trap. They then take her to an interrogation room where she meets Phil who explains the company used to be focused on manufacturing MRI machines until finding the dimension became their primary focus. He asks her what she found and she replies with the same explanation Clark gave her that it’s a misremembered copy of reality. She does ask if she’ll be let go, but Phil honestly admits it won’t be up to him to decide. As the dimension goes through distortion combined of Clark & Mary’s experiences, the film ends with the latter’s deformed doppelgänger being created, sitting silent & still.


THOUGHTS


It’s honestly great to see how in we’re now living in a generation where anyone can be a filmmaker as long as you got a camera and a dream. Pixels himself Kane Parsons was only 20 years old when crafting this creepy-pasta adaptation from YouTube to the big screen and make it a bigger sensation then the world could’ve ever anticipated, ultimately becoming a box office success similar to Blumhouse’s Obsession. The way the former takes more time to let the tension build compared to the latter, you just know this experience is once in a lifetime. When you get iconic producers involved like James Wan, Shawn Levy & Osgood Perkins, that just means you’re going places as the narrative suggests. I think it’s a given to say this movie’s great strength is gonna go to the production design by Danny Vermette. Every layer of the Backrooms dimension is downright creepier than the creatures that lurk within because you can’t guarantee how the next one is gonna look vice versa. With Greg Ng’s editing and Jeremy Cox’s cinematography, the balance of a first person pov for fans of the series and standard third person narrative for new viewers. The icing on the cake then goes to Parsons composing alongside Edo Van Bremen a strong score to develop the constant paranoia surrounding everyone that discovers the dimension. The way I perceive all the imitated peoples shown and brought to life via incredible makeup led by Werner Pretorius of Amazing Ape Productions, I’d have to say in my opinion that they do represent negative energy since they’re not ever remembered perfectly. Having said that, this does tie into the point writer Will Soodik is suggesting how important it is to stop dwelling onto past mistakes and take accountability by changing your ways in order to have self improvement. If you refuse to adapt, then you’re only planting yourself in your own personal prison. This dynamic is carefully explored through both Clark & Mary, who are brought to life via fantastic chemistry by Chiwetel Ejiofor & Renate Reinsve. The former is all about clinging onto the past compared to the former because he never admits it’s his fault things didn’t go as planned, wanting to validate his bitterness however he could. So when he finds the Backrooms dimension, his past aspirations become his obsession because it breaks him mentally rather than save him. For the experience he goes through, he does it to himself as much as he drags Kat & Bobby who are true victims here since they have no idea either what to expect whereas all Async agents volunteer post discovery. Having watched Pixels’ first short in advance, I was honestly expecting the stick figure monster, the Bacteria life form, to appear. Since it doesn’t, I didn’t mind Pirate Clark being the main threat because through a giant physical performance by Robert Bobroczky, we feel all the emotional weight brings upon himself as he does to others. It may not be an exact good thing for him to be killed by something he unknowingly created, but at least he doesn’t have to suffer anymore. With such an unstable figure. It makes sense why it becomes so easy to root for Mary because Reinsve portrays her as one who knows she has issues, but never excuses it for her behavior. She has the right to remember being scared of what her mom put her through and yet she never lets that define her at all per se. She could’ve and should’ve gone to the police to save Clark, but she chose to go in alone because she was that confident she can get through to him again. My favorite scene goes to the roleplay exercise where she puts aside her professionalism to get through to Clark before the need to escape. As much as she’s done her best as a therapist to try and help him find solace, that perspective was not gonna help her when her life is on the line and luckily, it paid off as she fought long enough to be free from such terror. Plus, I thought it was cool for her to use her concrete memento against Pirate Clark, being a moment where her trauma truly became her strength. What must be questioned now is if Async will do the right thing and let her go as we can’t guarantee what to expect from them however long a sequel were to take. Mark Duplass does clear the air as the professional yet invested Phil that the company is just curious in wanting to understand the origin of the dimension since there’s never been anything like it. I think they will let her go because she didn’t do anything wrong such as get in their way. But if they don’t, then they’re no different from other companies in sci fi stories. This movie will remain compelling for generations to come, but there are still some things that confuse me to the point where I’m not sure if a sequel can fix these issues. For starters, when exactly did the spare switch enter the breaker box. If the Backrooms dimension is bleeding into reality, there should be a timeline explaining when & how. It’s definitely far from discrete for Clark to sleep upstairs of the store rather than the basement. He’s gonna find the dimension anyway, but sleeping in your store for someone in the parking lot to notice is just asking to be embarrassed. It is then smart of him to leave tape marks to remember where the portal back to reality is, but he should’ve done that before he started exploring. While I don’t blame him not having proof on him to show Mary since he was too amazed to think about it, I think he still should’ve gotten a Polaroid at the least to show Kat & Bobby before recruiting them. Lastly, I think Mary should’ve dropped the bookcase over to buy herself time from Pirate Clark. That’s just not wise compared to the hilarity of how Async didn’t even censor the peg leg of Pirate Clark. Ignore these flaws however, then you can still identify Backrooms as one of the biggest breakthroughs in cinema history for showing creativity can come from most unexpected places. If you dig horror thrillers, then this is right up your alley.