MOVIE OF THE WEEK (5/29/26): BACKROOMS

"Help - I cannot find a definitive way to describe what is happening in this movie!" Clark (Chitewel Ejiofor) finds himself exploring the never-ending maze that is the BACKROOMS. © 2026 A24. All Rights Reserved.

CAST: Chitewel Ejiofor | Renate Reinsve | Finn Benett | Lukita Maxwell | Mark Duplass 

WRITER: Will Soodik

DIRECTOR: Kane Parsons

TRAILER:

THE STORY: Clark (Chitewel Ejiofor) isn't exactly doing well. An architect by degree, he's stuck running a ho-hum furniture store that isn't doing great sales-wise. His wife Barbara also kicked him out of the house, leaving him alone – but not lonely in his estimation – pretty much all the time. His assistant manager Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) help him film commercials on occasion, but there's really not much more to his life than that. He does, however, see Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), to help deal with his mental state, herself a survivor of a traumatic childhood that occasionally gives her nightmares of her own.

Clark's reality becomes changed forever, however, once he gets sick of dealing with power outages at the store, leading him to head downstairs and try to fix the problem. That move, however, leads to an unexpected discovery of a seemingly endless maze of backrooms that go on and on. As he tries to unravel the mystery of the experience, he finds himself getting lost more and more within it.

But are these rooms real, a metaphor, a blurring of reality and his own mind? There's only one way to find out ...

THE REVIEW: "What the hell was that?!"

If you know anything - and I mean ANYTHING – about A24 as a studio, you know that the previous phrase is one not uncommon when it comes to their releases. From Heredity and Midsommar to The Killing of a Sacred Deer and more, if there's a film that's going to have you leaving the theater with questions and/or scratching your head processing it, it's likely A24.

With its latest release BACKROOMS, that tradition will continue as the film never quite excels enough to make it worthy of being a front room display. 

First, you need to know that BACKROOMS is inspired by both a popular Internet "creepypasta" and a YouTube series of the same name created by director Kane Parsons several years ago. Second, BACKROOMS is not anything close to today's traditional horror entries, as it is never steps anywhere near the grotesque nature of the Terrifier films nor on the same plane as the traditional "jump scare" flicks that litter theaters yearly. 

Problem is, while the film features some good acting from Ejiofor and Reinsve, the payoff of the thin plot doesn't quite feel, for lack of a better term, worth it. While one can argue about the film making a statement on dealing with loss, grief and/or dealing with the realities of a world more concerned with consumerism than connection, BACKROOMS isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea. (Or, as the case may be, favorite coffee table.) A clearer, more definitive direction – literally – could help engage the viewer more to bring about that desired effect; instead, many audiences may find themselves watching trying to figure out where the weird-for-the-sake-of-weird film is going, especially once things really go off the rails (in terms of the story being told, not in its execution). 

Whereas viral sensations come and go, BACKROOMS will definitely have its diehard fans ... But they may pale in comparison to the scores of those who see it and leave the theater thinking it as a prime example of the old adage that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. 

RATING (OUT OF FOUR BUCKETS OF POPCORN):