Some horror movies scare you. 

Backrooms does something worse: it leaves you with a lingering feeling of profound, skincrawling discomfort. Instead of relying on jump scares or gruesome visuals, it transforms everyday spaces into something uncanny. If I can be honest with you guys, even my movie theater’s empty, outdated bathroom felt a little unsettling afterward. It’s the kind of horror movie that follows you and quietly attaches itself to your subconscious long after the film ends. 

Inspired by popular internet urban legend, 21 year old filmmaker and VFX artist, Kane Parsons, just made his directorial debut with Backrooms. Released this June, Backrooms is a stunningly cerebral horror that follows the psychological descent of a furniture salesman as he navigates the nightmarish labyrinth discovered within his own shop. 

Backrooms invents horror from the mundane. It’s the horror of an empty business complex, carpeted floors, and the uneasy feeling that something is waiting just around the corner. It’s the horror of a fruitless, humdrum life, broken relationships, and the quiet dread that tomorrow will look exactly like today. 

Utilizing Atmosphere as an Antagonist

Liminal horror has existed long before this film, originating from forums and obscure corners of the internet. The settings that define this genre are typically empty office spaces, endless hallways, and abandoned public places like shopping centers. 

It’s difficult to put your finger on exactly what it is about these spaces that inspires such a profound sense of dread. Their familiarity should feel comforting, yet in their emptiness, they are incredibly unsettling. In essence these spaces are deeply human or, in the very least, deeply manmade. 

Imagine the most sterile, inorganic environment that you can think of: a dentist office, an indoor pool. These interiors have hostile fluorescent lighting in place of natural sunlight; ceramic tile floors or hideous beige carpet instead of hardwood. 

Now subtract any sign of inhabitation. 

The genius of Parsons’ horror lies in the uncanny. It’s like a dream about your own ordinary life, except something is subtly off. The people aren’t quite right either. They’re more like faded impressions left behind by your memory than real people. 

The Horrors of an Unattended Psyche

As the film unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that the Backrooms function as a plot device, symbolizing Clark’s psychological unraveling. The labyrinth represents an external manifestation of his inner turmoil.

Throughout the Backrooms, we encounter remnants of Clark’s stagnant life in the form of promotional cardboard cutouts and office furniture. But the space is not as empty as we’re first led to believe. The Backrooms are inhabited by Clark’s distorted memories of people who have come and gone from his life. His ex-wife, for example, appears as an uncanny, creaturely version of her real-life self, suggesting that Clark copes with abandonment by reshaping his memories of failed relationships into something far more sinister than they ever truly were. 

Midway through the film, Clark’s therapist, Mary, ventures into the Backrooms in an attempt to find him after he had gone missing for days. When she finally locates Clark, she tries to coax him out. Clark, however, reveals that he feels comfortable in the Backrooms and would like to stay. 

Choosing the Maze

Backrooms is so much more than just unsettling atmosphere: it’s a well-constructed descent into the madness of the ordinary. What makes the film so effective isn’t just the creepily good set design, but the way the plot steadily escalates Clark’s isolation without overcomplicating its premise. 

This is where Kane Parsons’ vision lands its strongest impact. The Backrooms serve less as a metaphor here, but more as a fully realized setting that feels consistent, carefully staged, and visually cohesive in its unsettling emptiness. The production design does a lot of heavy lifting with the dull, yellow lighting and liminal spaces that feel genuinely disorienting without needing elaborate exposition. 

What Backrooms ultimately leaves behind isn’t necessarily a racing heart or sweating palms, but an unfortunate feeling of consensus. It suggests that sometimes we don’t just become trapped in oppressive circumstances, but learn to prefer their familiarity over an uncertain alternative. In doing so, the film presents us with an unsettling question: when reality feels fruitless and exhausting, where exactly are we trying to return to? 

And that’s where Backrooms lands its final, quiet discomfort: not in what it shows, but in the possibility that the maze was never just a place you enter, but a place you might choose to stay.

What did you think of the movie Backrooms? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!