{"id":796,"date":"2026-05-27T10:06:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:06:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=796"},"modified":"2026-05-27T10:06:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:06:53","slug":"backrooms-review-experimental-horror-comes-out-of-the-margins-in-kane-parsons-youtube-gone-a24-head-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=796","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Backrooms\u2019 Review: Experimental Horror Comes Out of the Margins in Kane Parsons\u2019 YouTube-Gone-A24 Head Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tIn \u201cBackrooms,\u201d a creepy meditative dada horror trip in the what-is-reality?<\/em> tradition of \u201cEraserhead\u201d and \u201cSkinamarink,\u201d the director Kane Parsons turns our fears into a funhouse that\u2019s got a lot of walls but no bottom. The central character, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), is a divorced furniture-story owner who\u2019s simmering with resentment over what a junk heap his life has turned out to be. Clark sees a therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), and the two do a role-playing game in which they reenact Clark\u2019s angry sob story of how his wife threw him out of the house. He\u2019s now living in the store, which is called Cap\u2019n Clark\u2019s Ottoman Empire (he does TV ads for it in a pirate costume). It\u2019s a big ugly place that sells cheap ugly furniture, and one day, when he\u2019s trying to fix the store\u2019s janky lighting, he\u2019s drawn to a wall, then into<\/em> the wall, which he passes right through.<\/p>\n

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\n\tOn the other side of the wall is a vast empty room. It\u2019s like a version of the store that\u2019s been cleaned out, with musty carpeting, a ceiling dotted with rectangular fluorescent-light panels, and walls of faded urine-yellow. It\u2019s connected to another room, and another, and another, and some of them contain stacked furniture or piles of laundry, and some are partitioned, with square holes that look like passageways. And the place just keeps going. Has Clark gone through a looking glass that\u2019s going to lead him to a deliverance? Has he uncovered a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma? Or has he entered hell? Maybe all of the above.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBackrooms\u201d has a backstory that\u2019s nearly as interesting as the movie. It\u2019s not the first film to be spun out of a creepypasta concept (\u201cSlender Man,\u201d a studio release, came out in 2018), but it might be the first to speak in the language of Internet memes, to channel the very form of metastasizing web horror. The Backrooms started off as a single spooky photograph that was snapped during the renovation of a former furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The concept was then expanded, on a 4Chan thread, by users, but it remained a vision of hell as infinite abandoned office space until 2022, when 16-year-old Kane Parsons took that premise and expanded it into an intricate series of short films on YouTube; the series became a sensation.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the Backrooms films, the camera wandered through room after room (it was like a movie set without end), the images shot through with degraded VHS grain. There was a \u201cBlair Witch\u201d aura to it all \u2014 the found-footage dimension, with the handheld camera that the camera person never puts down, even when running, and the whole hint of \u201cWhat lurks behind the next corner?\u201d But it was also a seminal example of the \u201climinal space\u201d aesthetic:\u00a0images of empty or abandoned spaces that feel forlorn and vaguely haunted and have the quality of a real-life portal. The original liminal space might almost be the shots of empty hotel corridors in \u201cThe Shining,\u201d a film that I\u2019ve always found to be far spookier in its audio-visual design than in anything else about it.<\/p>\n

\n\tBased on the popularity of the Backrooms series, Parsons got an offer from A24 to spin a horror movie out of it, and given that he\u2019s only 20 years old, that makes him sound like the Orson Welles of viral cinematic crossover. (So does his first name!) And maybe he is. \u201cBackrooms,\u201d drawing on Parsons\u2019 following, could turn out to be the first experimental horror film that makes $25 million in its opening weekend. Parsons, in his feature directing debut (the script is by Will Soodik), proves to be a wizard of mood who shares the early David Lynch\u2019s love of industrial cosmic sound design, and also Lynch\u2019s fixation on the mysteries of electricity. Parsons wrings true terror out of the sense of being enclosed, in what feels at times like it could be some infinite version of a serial killer\u2019s lair.<\/p>\n

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\n\tAs an atmospheric freakout, \u201cBackrooms\u201d is extraordinarily effective. You sit back and settle into the enigmas and the grunge textures, knowing that the movie is going to keep raising your eyebrows. The sensation of moldering dread hinges on the prospect that something awful is lurking inside those musty yellow rooms, kind of like the monster that pops up in Lynch\u2019s \u201cInland Empire\u201d (another progenitor of The Backrooms). And Parsons, in his too-refined-for-jump-scares way, delivers those monsters \u2014 or, at least, a few tormented figures of twisty-headed horror. There\u2019s a towering demon version of Cap\u2019n Clark, as well as humans who look like they have several faces crumpled into themselves. What are they? Maybe they\u2019re us.<\/p>\n

\n\tChiwetel Ejiofor, who is such a great actor, is the perfect presence to have at the center of all this. His morosely bearded, boozing Clark is a man whose broken-down life doesn\u2019t make sense to him, and as he\u2019s drawn into the backrooms, he communicates \u2014 and inculcates in the audience \u2014 the feeling that he\u2019s searching for a catharsis of meaning, even if it turns out to be a nightmare (which, of course, it does).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor all the spooky vividness of its imagination, is \u201cBackrooms\u201d a good movie? It\u2019s a film of suggestion and down-the-rabbit-hole darkness, like a haunted-house thriller renovated into a shivery poem. It may alienate anyone expecting a conventional fear ride. Parsons, for everything he shows you, leaves you with the sensation that the real horror may be just out of reach \u2014 which, in its way, is what makes the liminal-space aesthetic a form of cool. But there\u2019s no denying that Kane Parsons is now the master of it. Going forward, it will be fascinating to see how he fills those spaces.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\u2018Backrooms\u2019 Review: Experimental Horror Comes Out of the Margins in Kane Parsons\u2019 YouTube-Gone-A24 Head Trip<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

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\t\tReviewed at AMC Empire, New York, May 21, 2025. MPA rating: R. Running time: 110 MIN.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n

    \n
  • \nProduction:<\/strong>
    \nAn A24 release of a 21 Laps Entertainment, Atomic Monster, North Road Films, Phobos production. Producers: James Wan, Michael Clear, Roberto Patino, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, Osgood Perkins, Chris Ferguson, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, Kori Adelson.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nCrew:<\/strong>
    \nDirector: Kane Parsons. Screenplay: Will Soodik. Camera: Jeremy Cox. Editor: Greg Ng. Music: Edo Van Breeman, Kane Parsons.\t\t\t<\/li>\n
  • \nWith:<\/strong>
    \nChiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell. \t\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a troubled furniture-store owner in a movie that turns the Internet memes of liminal space into an atmospheric freakout.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[802,803,804,805],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-backrooms","tag-chiwetel-ejiofor","tag-kane-parsons","tag-renate-reinsve-2"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Backrooms\u2019 Review: Experimental Horror Comes Out of the Margins in Kane Parsons\u2019 YouTube-Gone-A24 Head Trip - Relocation Observer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationobserver.com\/?p=796\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Backrooms\u2019 Review: Experimental Horror Comes Out of the Margins in Kane Parsons\u2019 YouTube-Gone-A24 Head Trip - 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