Backrooms

Backrooms, 2026, 3 ¾ stars

Make room  for a nightmare

Kane Parsons serves up ‘creepypasta’

Exclusive to MeierMovies, July 10, 2026

What’s your recurring dream? Don’t have one? Sure, you do. We all do. I’ll tell you mine.

I’m strolling through my house and discover a room I didn’t know I had. It’s a good feeling, as I realize I can use the room to house some of my stuff. And I have lots of stuff. Or maybe I can turn it into a guest bedroom, or storage space, or a second living room.

As a metaphor, the dream is good too. It means I’m unearthing a hitherto unknown talent, or exploring uncharted chapters of my life, or boldly going where I haven’t gone before.

That’s not the type of dream furniture salesman Clark is having. In fact, he’s not dreaming at all. He really has found a hidden room or, more precisely, an entire hidden dimension, on the other side of the wall of his store’s basement. But his discovery soon becomes something altogether different, a place where memories morph into nightmarish metaverses and alternate realities rule the day.

Clark is the central character in YouTuber-turned-director Kane Parsons’ feature debut, Backrooms. Based on Parsons’ 24-part web series of the same name, the psychological sci-fi-drama-mystery-horror (it’s tough to define) is written by William Soodik and features knock-out performances by Chiwetel Ejiofor (as Clark) and Renate Reinsve. Indeed, it’s almost a two-hander, despite effective but brief turns by Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell.

And that’s all you’ll get from this reviewer on the plot. I just hope, like me, you didn’t see the web series, as it’s best to go in blind. Even if you haven’t had the aforementioned dreams of mysterious rooms, you’ll likely experience some mind expansion of the surreal, or even absurdist, kind. (Credit production designer Danny Vermette and Alan Derksen for much of that.)

The film is original but not that original. It’s inspired not just by Parsons’ own series but by “creepypasta” and the internet’s concept of liminal space. These ideas are touted as the 21st century’s, but they aren’t, as one can see strains of eternal notions in Backrooms. For cinematic reference, Christopher Nolan’s Insterstellar (2014) comes to mind, along with Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), John Frankenheimer’s Seconds (1966), Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962), Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and the “Little Girl Lost” (1962) episode of The Twilight Zone, in which a child mysteriously slips into another realm behind her bedroom wall.

But the best comparison is even older. It’s the 1950 short story The Third Level, in which author Jack Finney introduces us to an “ordinary guy” named Charley who happens upon an extra platform of Grand Central Station, one that isn’t supposed to exist. On that level, people dress older, the air smells different and the trains are out of the past. For it is the past. It’s 1894.

After returning to the present, Charley tells the whole strange story to his psychiatrist, Sam, who doesn’t seem to believe him, until he goes searching for the third level himself and, like his patient, finds the impossible – just like in Backrooms, in which Clark’s therapist, Mary (Reinsve), also goes looking for the “fifth dimension,” as Rod Serling would say, and finds it.

On a personal note, it took me a while to compose this article. So in my spare time, between writing sessions, I went seeking that extra room in my house I keep dreaming of. I finally found it. In fact, I’m now putting the finishing touches on this review from that room. It’s huge. And beige. And seemingly designed by M.C. Escher. I’m happy here.

So if you don’t see me for a while, don’t worry. You know where to find me.

© 2026 MeierMovies, LLC

For more information on the movie, visit IMDB and Wikipedia. The film is currently playing in cinemas and will start to stream on July 14. It is rated R.