Architecture of Dread: Backrooms is a Visually Arresting, Narratively Flawed Labyrinth

Rating: ★★★½☆

Kane Parsons’ leap from YouTube to the big screen delivers masterful, Kubrickian tension, anchored by excellent performances—even if the script occasionally loses its way.

At just 20 years old, YouTube-phenomenon-turned-director Kane Parsons has achieved something remarkable with Backrooms. Transitioning an internet-born "creepypasta" into a mainstream, studio-backed A24 feature is no small feat, yet Parsons handles his jump to the big screen with startling confidence. The film, which follows a depressed discount furniture store manager and his therapist as they stumble into an unending, mirror-dimension of eerie office spaces, is a masterclass in atmospheric filmmaking. Parsons directs with the assured hand of a veteran, proving his viral origins were merely the opening act of a highly promising cinematic career.

The true star of the film is its terrifyingly immersive production design. The seemingly infinite expanse of chartreuse, chevron-wallpapered corridors and buzzing fluorescent lights is flawlessly realized. Moving away from the over-reliance on digital trickery that plagues much of modern horror, the sprawling, physical interiors feel tangibly oppressive. Through meticulous geometry and suffocating lighting, the set creates a Kubrickian unease that turns the mundane into the monstrous. It is an environment that feels both deeply familiar and fundamentally wrong, successfully preying on the modern alienation of corporate liminal spaces.

To anchor this high-concept purgatory, Backrooms relies heavily on its central performances, which are uniformly excellent and prevent the film from feeling like an empty tech demo.

Chiwetel Ejiofor brings a necessary, grounded gravitas to Clark, a divorced, alcoholic failed architect whose discovery of the "null zone" beneath his store pushes his already fragile psyche to the brink. Ejiofor captures a terrifying descent into madness with a profound, tragic exhaustion.

Renate Reinsve, playing his therapist Dr. Mary Kline, is equally compelling. Tasked with navigating both the physical labyrinth to save her patient and the emotional weight of her own unresolved traumas, Reinsve delivers a nuanced, empathetic performance that lends the film’s surrealism genuine human stakes.

Where Backrooms stumbles—and what keeps it from ascending to outright masterpiece status—is its writing. The screenplay, credited to Roberto Patino and Will Soodik, struggles under the weight of stretching a minimalist, mood-driven internet phenomenon into a 105-minute conventional narrative. While the existential dread is undeniably palpable, the character development occasionally feels rushed, relying heavily on familiar psychological tropes to fill the quiet spaces between scares. The script works best when it trusts its audience to sit in the deafening silence of the maze; however, when the film tries too hard to verbalize its mysteries or force neat narrative arcs onto an unknowable dimension, it inadvertently dilutes the very ambiguity that makes its core premise so terrifying.

Despite its narrative growing pains, Backrooms is an undeniably ambitious and visually unforgettable experience. It may not boast the tightest script of the year, but as an exercise in sheer, suffocating tension, it is a triumph. Parsons has cemented himself as a formidable new voice in horror, proving that the deepest terrors often lie not in the shadows, but under the glaring, relentlessly buzzing lights of an empty room.