{"id":2437364,"date":"2026-05-29T19:11:23","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T19:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2437364"},"modified":"2026-05-29T19:11:23","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T19:11:23","slug":"backrooms-review-the-spooky-horror-movie-that-young-people-are-obsessed-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/backrooms-review-the-spooky-horror-movie-that-young-people-are-obsessed-with\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Backrooms&#8217; review: The spooky horror movie that young people are obsessed with"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F2%2F2026%2F05%2Fnewspress-collage-h8nhspops-1780079396332.jpg?quality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%261780065134\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--review alignleft\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n\t\t<span class=\"inline-module--review__eyebrow subsection-heading-semi__label\"><br \/>\n\t\t\tmovie review\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"inline-module--review__title subsection-heading-semi\">\n\t\t\tBACKROOMS\t\t<\/h2>\n<div class=\"rating\">\n<div class=\"rating__stars\">\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--filled\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--filled\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--filled\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--empty\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<p>Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (some violent content, language, bloody images). In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Hollywood trembles in fear of the havoc the internet has wrought and will continue to wreak on its core business. Execs wake up in a cold sweat from a nightmare that blockbusters have been replaced by 30-second TikTok videos. And, yikes, they almost have. But perhaps the key to a prosperous future is collaboration.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Enter \u201cBackrooms\u201d: A disquieting and smart new horror film from A24 that, for now, can only be seen in theaters, yet is the brainchild of 4chan and YouTube users. Its director Kane Parsons is just 20 years old and his movie is already an uncommonly hot title with the younger set. Eighty-eight percent of its packed preview night audiences around the country were under 35.<\/p>\n<p>You can see why. While the main character of \u201cBackrooms,\u201d Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), is a sleep-deprived, middle-aged man whose dreams of being an architect have been crushed as irreparably as his marriage, a youthful energy pervades Parsons\u2019 strange and engrossing journey into the unfurnished abyss.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark in \u201cBackrooms.\u201d <span class=\"credit\">A24 via AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The seed of \u201cBackrooms\u201d was planted in 2019 when a user posted an image on the website 4Chan of an architecturally unsettling room \u2014 tinted yellow with fluorescent lights, patterned wallpaper, ceiling tiles and gray carpet. People wrote horror stories online about the picture, which led to the detailed lore of the Backrooms, a labyrinth of eerie spaces accessible by hidden portals around the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module aligncenter\">\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--more inline-module--columnist inline-module--more--thirds\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n<h2 class=\"inline-module__heading subsection-heading subsection-heading--single-line \">\n\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"subsection-heading__sub\">Johnny Oleksinski<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Parsons turned the trend into a popular YouTube series with millions of views when he was 16. And he rooted his creation in documentary-style \u201cfound footage,\u201d like \u201cThe Blair Witch Project.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The director used that same on-edge aesthetic for his debut feature, which is set in no-smartphones 1990. Clark, who runs Cap\u2019n Clark\u2019s Ottoman Empire, a failing furniture store, stumbles into the Backrooms when he walks through a wall in his building\u2019s basement.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The confused man tells his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve of \u201cSentimental Value\u201d), who has her own demons, about what the messed-up oddity he\u2019s found. And Clark sounds completely insane.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like the store just continues, I guess?,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Paranoid and needing proof, he drags down his assistant Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) with a camera to explore the mystifying maze.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Clark enlists his employee and her boyfriend to help him explore a mysterious area he found in the store. <span class=\"credit\">A24 via AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The trio doesn\u2019t just discover drywall and chairs, however. Deadly threats lurk in the shadows. Their expedition turns into a fight for survival.<\/p>\n<p>The areas get weirder and weirder. One is lit only by a Christmas tree with Pompei-esque body manikins buried halfway in the floor. Another is piled high with stinking clothes. There\u2019s an industrial pool. Even though they are modern rooms, taken together they\u2019re a marvel of production design.<\/p>\n<p>The off-kilter, subterranean office vibe brings to mind the sci-fi TV series \u201cSeverance.\u201d A mysterious company is involved here, too. But the Backrooms also evoke childhood memories, and our early fascination with basements, forts and secret hideouts \u2014 and the fear that comes with them.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s quite a coup for Parsons to start off his career with Oscar-nominated actors as skilled and deep as Ejiofor and Reinsve.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Renate Reinsve plays Clark\u2019s therapist, Mary. <span class=\"credit\">A24 via AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The \u201c12 Years A Slave\u201d star has bloodshot eyes and a maniacal resolve as Clark, who gradually is subsumed by the alternate reality. There\u2019s more than a bit of Jack Nicholson in \u201cThe Shining\u201d to his trapped-indoors intensity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mary, meanwhile, winds up in the Backrooms out of concern for her missing patient, and begins experiencing glimpses of her painful past. Reinsve\u2019s calming demeanor fades to the shakes of a scared rabbit. It\u2019s here where we start to get some idea of what this unusual dimension is. Sort of.<\/p>\n<p>Both the strength and weakness of \u201cBackrooms\u201d is that it was born of a big concept. The most spellbinding and paralyzing aspect of Parsons\u2019 film is its never-ending, creepy scenery that he\u2019s shot so appealingly and menacingly \u2014 all inspired by a spooky image on a message board.\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>\u201cBackrooms\u201d is an exciting debut for 20-year-old director Kane Parsons. <span class=\"credit\">A24 via AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The knotty explanation of the nature of the place, however, made me feel like I was back at Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cTenet,\u201d or like I just walked through a haze of smoke in Washington Square Park. And as the plot hurdles to a close and a so-so monster is introduced, we come out of the trance and back into a more familiar scary movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Even so, this is an undeniably exciting and actually quite sophisticated horror flick, and a fantastic bow for Parsons. There are far, far worse rooms you can walk into at the movie theater than \u201cBackrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>movie review BACKROOMS Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (some violent content, language, bloody images). In theaters. Hollywood trembles in fear of the havoc the internet has wrought and will continue to wreak on its core business. Execs wake up in a cold sweat from a nightmare that blockbusters have been replaced by 30-second TikTok [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2437365,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[348230,21741,21993,22232,304995,21912],"class_list":["post-2437364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-chiwetel-ejiofor","tag-entertainment","tag-films","tag-horror","tag-movie-reviews","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Backrooms-review-The-spooky-horror-movie-that-young-people-are.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2437364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2437366,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437364\/revisions\/2437366"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2437365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2437364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2437364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2437364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}