KUOW73%
The '90s are scary now: 'Backrooms' terror is as deep as its never-ending liminal space 32%
By Dyer Oxley0%
5/29/2026, 10:24:06 PM
Topics: Movies, Arts And Life
Keywords: Backrooms, Movie Review, Horror Film, Liminal Spaces, Creepypasta, Kane Pixels, Chiwetel Ejiofor
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, Appeal to Emotion, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Availability Heuristic as the most egregious example at 20.3% saturation with 199 hits. Analysis detected 2,055 faulty-reasoning hits from 980 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 41% and a BS Rank of 32% (14,952 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 68.30% of the article peer group.
With minimal promotion, "Backrooms" will come as a surprise to many audiences, and that was by design.
But don't miss this highly original scary movie about liminal spaces.
"Backrooms" is an under-the-radar movie, based on an internet phenomenon (creepypasta) that you'll have to explain to your friends as you're hyping this tense psychological scare.
This will be among the most original films to impact audiences this year.
This film exploits the fright of what might be around the corner, and the unease you get from vacant spaces designed for high foot traffic, yet remain endless and hollow.
Imagine a dead shopping mall or what Seattle's office spaces currently look like, and you'll have an idea of how "Backrooms" looks and feels.
Set in 1990, "Backrooms" is another example of how culture has advanced so quickly, younger generations now find once-innocuous items and aesthetics quite scary.
Millennials, for example, came of age in a time when clowns turned from funny to terrifying.
Now, the landline telephone you grew up with can be as scary as a creepy antique doll.
A cold, dark basement was once terrifying.
Now, horror can be derived from 1990s strip mall aesthetics — the eerie glare of fluorescent lighting, or the unnerving golden tones of honey oak.
Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is the center of "Backrooms."
He is trying, and failing, to make ends meet running a furniture store in a strip mall.
He puts on a pirate persona to advertise the store, but still, no foot traffic.
It's one topic he discusses with his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve), on top of his inability to keep healthy relationships, his divorce, and other anxieties.
But he puts all this aside when he discovers a hidden doorway in the basement of his shop.
Behind it is a labyrinth of hallways and rooms, liminal spaces akin to what you'd find in office buildings and strip malls.
Piles of furniture and other enigmas are scattered throughout this expanse.
And perhaps there is someone, or something, around the corner.
It's endless.
What is it?
What does it mean?
Where did it come from?
Clark searches for the answers, ultimately pulling his therapist into the mystery.
While the '90s aesthetics help drive the spookiness of the movie, this is not a traditional horror film.
Do not expect heavy gore or piano strikes.
What is truly scary about "Backrooms" is the spotlight it puts on your own struggle to understand yourself; a metaphor for digging through memories and psychology to find buried answers to what ails us.
It's a search that can be as captivating as it is terrifying.
Some take this journey at their therapist's office.
Others in the self-help aisle of the bookstore.
And some get lost in the backrooms of their mind.
"Backrooms" is refreshingly original.
It's being marketed at "liminal horror."
Liminal spaces are hallways, doorways, and other transitional corridors found throughout buildings.
This movie is part sci-fi, part thriller, part horror, with a dash of monster.
With some found-footage vibes, it could fall within the horror niche carved out by "Paranormal Activity" or "The Blair Witch Project."
Much of the scares are from not knowing what is around the corner, being unsure if you heard a noise down a hallway, or perhaps you saw something out of the corner of your eye.
The tension of not knowing keeps you on a creepy edge of your seat.
This movie may initially appear to be based on a simple theme: Never-ending space with mysteries around one corner, and unease around another.
But it manages a level of depth on par with the magnitude of the labyrinth it presents on screen.
The backstory of "Backrooms"
"Backrooms" began as a type of creepypasta, which is essentially just another term for "horror" among internet circles.
While scary stories can be referred to as "horror" in books or movies, when internet communities started creating spooky concepts, they called it "creepypasta" (people would copy-paste memes, videos, etc. across the internet).
The most famous example is Slenderman, which, ever since the concept was born in 2009, has been turned into movies, books, web series, video games, and more.
At age 16, Kane Parsons, who goes by the name Kane Pixels online, took on the creepypasta concept of backrooms that had been going viral.
The highschooler used open-source 3D software to create endless hallways and rooms.
That evolved into a spooky video series, presented as found footage from the 1990s.
A world was built up and a backstory grew among these videos as they amassed tens of millions of views on YouTube (more than 79 million as of the time of this review).
It was so successful, Hollywood came along and turned it into this movie, with 20-year-old Parsons directing.
Will Soodik, who previously wrote for TV shows like "Westworld" and "Ash vs Evil Dead," came onboard to write the film, building it out from Parson's YouTube series.
If you feel like "Backrooms" suddenly popped up out of nowhere, you're likely not alone.
Promotion was targeted at niche internet communities who were already familiar with the creepypasta.
There were guerrilla marketing campaigns with taped off doorways, akin to what is seen in the film, showing up in random hallways.
Fake commercials for the furniture store popped up on Pluto TV.
Commercials for this movie were not run during the Super Bowl.
Unless you were already tuned into the lore around this movie, and the online communities it sprung from, you likely didn't see anything.
But that doesn't mean this movie is not for you.
"Backrooms" is a scary film you shouldn't miss.
"Backrooms"
4/5 stars
Screen or stream?
Screen!
Definitely see "Backrooms" in a movie theater.
You're going to want that big screen for how this film, and its spaces, are presented.
Rated R
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