Backrooms came out in 2026 to mainly good reviews.
Inspired by creepy pastas of the same name, we enter a world filled with psychological horror.
If you’re looking for jumpscares or the supernatural, it’s not really what it’s aiming for here.
I came in blind, and discover more and more lore every day.
The backrooms are a dream-like parallel dimension that doesn’t quite make sense.
It’s a memory of a memory.
A place where trauma gets amplified, sets its roots and goes to die, only to be duplicated to infinity.
The visuals are both great and wonky at the same time.
The score is perfect, and if you love everything spelled out for you, this movie might not be your cup of tea.
The theme really stood out and I liked it, but was it a full « I’ll watch it again and it’ll become my cult classic » ?
No. Sadly not.
While it is often compared to Obsession, as both came out around the same time, Obsession wins my vote by a mile.
But. And it’s a big one.
Lore over jumpscares
Backrooms was a dream project for the creator, who started working on videos similar to the movie back when he was just 16, on YouTube.
That deserves respect.
Osgood Perkins even defended his vision of the movie sometimes to the A24 studio.
That’s a lot of credit for a first time director, and could turn Backrooms into a series in the end.
The concept is insane. Both sad and new.
As adults, we’ll always have a tiny nudge inside, a feeling that is both sad and nostalgic.
If not, then sad and stuck. The Backrooms movie’s liminal space represents that feeling exactly.
The sensation of tension and filling in the void works great.
And then we get cardboard cutouts of a dude who looks like Alcide in True Blood, and it takes me out every single time we see him.
No gut feelings
The unsettlement of seeing Clark, one of our two protagonists, discover the backrooms and go in deeper and deeper had me on edge the entire time.
He went head on, ignoring any gut feeling. I would have looked around and made sure the door was still there, at no point would curiosity had gotten me as far as him on the first go.
Maybe on the fifth ? Or more ?
I guess it’s different when you’re walking inside a messed up rendition of your own memories and feelings.
After all, it’s almost like the backrooms called out to him, to get him there in the first place.
And once there… oh boy. Does it go wrong.
Selfish or insane ?
At first he tries to map out the place, then he gets help, but there is a fine line between knowing whether he would get them killed or not. The debate is open.
He knew about the monster from the get go, and he kept a head in his fridge in the end… Did he eat the rest ?
And then…
I have a lot of questions, but I think the main one would be how did he figure out that he could eat the still-life people ? Was Clark a cannibal on top of being a selfish self-loathing alcoholic ?
Did we miss something there ?
The entrance being so close to a furniture store broke me. I never expected another dimension to imagine human guts as sofa filling. This was great. No notes.
A dreadful subtext
While the two male still-lifes were most likely strangers…
The woman seemed to be referencing Clark’s memory of his ex wife…
And the way she bolted the second Captain Clark showed up explained more than enough to us viewers.
The monsters had a sort of « understanding » before Mary, the therapist, managed to get human Clark to admit to his short-comings and mistakes. And just like that, the understanding was over, and so was human Clark.
We then move on to Mary as our main protagonist. While Clark was stuck in his own terrible choices, Mary circles around her guilt towards her mother’s mental illness.
The guilt of not being able to save everyone, to help more, a guilt that isolates her just as much as Clark.
While the still-life following her remains Captain Clark, she dives into new sets in the Backrooms that represent her old neighbourhood, her old house, her memories.
She sprinkles pieces of herself, of her memories, into this dimension.
At the end of the day, I think Mary knows she might not make it out alive, after talking to the scientist.
Not with a corporation being involved.
She might find comfort in the fact that after she’s gone, a version of her will always live on in the backrooms. And even if someone destroys that version of her, another version will be created.
By entering, she managed to leave behind the eternal handprint she subconsciously hoped for.
The movie ends with a few new set designs, including abstract concepts of the world behind those walls, with missing persons posters, and the remnants of Clark and Mary, intertwined in wonky infrastructure.
A corporate void
While not for everyone, I think this movie dives deep into humanity and its problems.
A magical void ? Instead of being amazed, the corporations try to capitalize on it.
A violent alcoholic and a guilt-ridden therapist ? How could they make it out of their own minds ?
As bystanders, we are left to ponder what our own little backrooms would look like… And at the end of the day, it’s most likely that none of us would make it out alive.
All in all, it was a good time.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Captain Clark’s design, and the pace felt a bit long sometimes, but the set design more than made up for it all.
My rating : 4/5 bats
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