A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.
Rated 3.7 / 5 from 8 logs on Katalog
Backrooms is a 2026 psychological horror film directed and co-scored by Kane Parsons, with a script by Will Soodik. Based on Parsons’s hit web series, which was itself inspired by the iconic "Backrooms" creepypasta. The film follows Clark, a furniture store owner, and his therapist, Dr. Mary, as they discover an endless dimension of liminal spaces hidden in the store's basement. The concept is brilliant, and the script handles it remarkably well. For his directorial film debut, Parsons does a fantastic job. His atmospheric score syncs perfectly with the haunting visuals. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve deliver strong and realistic performances. Genius in its simplicity and well executed. 8/10
So uhm it's not particularly bad, I have some idea of what it tries to tell but at the same time I feel like I didn't per se get it either. It's a really weird movie where I feel like u need to digest it a lot more to let it make sense. || TBH I don't know if it's talking about AI and how by letting AI generate at infinity it loses all sense of the original thing or just humans losing themselves by repeating the same things over and over until they don't even remember why they do it and just accept it like this to the point of creating a monster in their way if being and living life. || I think I like the idea of what he's trying to do but the some parts just don't make sense either with how I'm interpreting it. So I'll revisit is someday in the hope that my mind is a bit more connected with it but sheesh
I was so tense the whole time... every sound, every flicker of the light made me nervous (so I guess they did a pretty good job) Not sure if towards the end I needed some kind of explanation, or maybe just a deeper connection with the female character's childhood One of those movie that makes me think "If it was me out there, I would probably die in the first ten minutes"... or in this case I would most definitely get lost in a freaking never-ending yellow corridor
So I always loved the whole thing about the backrooms, and when I say the whole thing I mean a few pictures I saw here and there and a handful of videos on-the-line made by fans, I suppose. Somehow - it's surely explainable but I wouldn't know how - I am - and we are - attracted to what we fear. In my case, it was always the parts with pools, open seas, depths, for I am a self-diagnosed thalassophobic fuck. I can't even swim in small artificial urban lakes without hyperventilating and turning back the moment my feet leave the bottom. Yesterday afternoon, I went for a swim, the first, this year. And when I say a swim I mean just stand there with water barely reaching my knees. Then, maybe the breeze, maybe the freshly cut grass, maybe the good company, I said "today I'm fighting my fears" and started to swim back and forth, each time pushing myself two of three meters farther. It was phisically and mentally exhausting, scary and exciting. Yesterday night, as I was watching this film with @tuttifunghi , I felt something similar. I kind of knew, more or less, what to expect: a well-made scary film with depth and shit. But as we were continuing I started to realise how similar it was with my earlier-in-the-day swimming experience. It started nicely, cool water to my knees, sweet, melancholic characters talking, and me sympathising with them, the breeze. It went as a thought and a timid approach, maybe I could take a few steps in, he could explore the rooms, fearful and fascinated, yellow as the sun behind the clouds. It proceeded delirious, an obsession, something to regret later on, perhaps, let's hide my face in the water opaque, lower floors, the darkness, it's done, we are here, there is going back but we won't go now, we stay. It kept asthmatic, in panic, alternated by moments of grim. Are we here, did we make it or was it useless. I forgot where I was going, but this lostness, it fits with the movie. As I said to @tuttifunghi yesterday night, I wouldn't call this a horror movie, not in the canonical way, at least. I think it's deeper, it made me think about myself, like I was when I was trying to swim. It made me feel courageous and lost simultaneously. It's a movie, for me, about self-try, whatever it means. About trying to accept, trying to listen, to speak, about trying to be. About trying to try, which can be the most difficult thing, sometimes. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve are two great - actor and actress - and they carried the whole thing. I think without them it would be a mediocre film. Beautiful
this was absolutely terrifying for me. I audibly (but quietly) said "EW" many times in the cinema. my complicated and blurry relationship with my brain and my memories got triggered pretty bad. I agree that the writing could have been better and that the characters are not developed enough but I still think it's an amazingly disturbing movie
I liked it, and I think the backrooms aesthetic and atmosphere is really well done. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve is great casting, and the more I think about it the more I like the story. ||Despite avoiding explaining everything, I thought they still explained too much, and I wish the mystery was preserved even more.|| There were 8 year olds watching the film, so I can confirm it's not that scary. I would say that's maybe the key thing lowers this for me: It's a very accessible introduction to Backrooms. I think it can be called a success, which is good because it may trigger more awareness for the genre and bring new media, but as someone who has seen a lot of Backrooms-type media, I was hoping for grittier and scarier, especially considering the usual cam-corder, found-footage vibe and how creepy that makes everything. It goes a lot further than Severance, which is great, but not as far as The Shining, although that's the highest possible bar so I'll forgive the 21(!) year old director.
Backrooms somehow calm me more than creep me out. Maybe it’s a sort of nostalgia because I loved exploring abandoned spaces, usually hotels, as a teenager. They were mostly emptied, which made stumbling upon any random item after many labyrinth-like corridors so exciting, each object felt like an artefact. I love “Backrooms” spaces, design, colours, mood, and the palpable sense of scale, but I wish these spaces were explored much more. The beauty and the danger of backrooms is that you can show and make literally anything happen within them, and what happens in this movie is quite underwhelming. This may be one of those examples where a concept too open leads to choices too obvious. It’s tricky. These spaces rely on atmosphere, mood, exploration. Placing a plot into them without breaking the spell, without falling into a trap of over-explaining, is really difficult. This movie kind of manages to do that in the first half, much less in the second, to the point I wish there was no characters’ background at all, but I’m still happy that the attempt was made.
