Backrooms (2026)

Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a down and out furniture store manager, discovers a portal in the basement of his store that leads to a mysterious office space that seems to go on forever. His therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) becomes concerned for Clark's well-being after he leaves her a cryptic message on her answering machine before disappearing. Mary goes to his store and enters the endless Backrooms to find Clark and bring him back. Now they are being chased by Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole) who wants to make them fill out TPS reports forever and ever and ever...

To say that I was going to enjoy Backrooms (2026) no matter how good or bad of a film it turned out to be is a fair thing to, you know, say. Ever since I was a kid sneaking into construction sites and empty warehouses. Playing video games like Myst and Friday the 13th (the 1989 version); the kind where you end up spending a very long time just wandering around. Then as a young security guard back in the mid-1990s looking after some very empty and truly creepy spaces like an abandoned rehab facility, an unfinished medical building, and an ice cream factory on the coldest night of the year. So yes, I have felt a connection to something akin to what director Kane Parsons has cooked up.

Backrooms is an eerie, claustrophobic, and haunting film that hypnotizes from the moment it starts and put me in a place of unease that lasted long into the night after I left the theater. The film's score by Edo Van Breen (The Monkey and Keeper (both 2025)) and Kane Parsons hit all the right wistful/creepy buttons in my head and I hope I can score a copy for myself sometime. And finding out that Osgood Perkins, my favorite horror director working today, was among the producers that worked on Backrooms made me very happy indeed. 

I like it when something good goes viral, but it'll be annoying as shit when everyone decides it's too popular and they don't like it anymore. You know shit is gonna be big when my mom, who doesn't give a crap about movies, texted me asking about Backrooms. My bud Sam and I had a good crowd at AMC Veterans here in Tampa. Everyone seemed to enjoy it though two teenagers bailed around the 10-minute mark which made me sad.