BACKROOMS
(director: Kane Parsons; screenwriter: Will Soodik; cinematographer: Jeremy Cox; editor: Greg Ng; music: Edo Van Breeman, Kane Parsons; cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor (Clark), Renate Reinsve (Dr. Mary Kline), Mark Duplass (Phil, Asynch Engineer), Finn Bennett (Bobby, Kat’s stoner boyfriend), Lukita Maxwell (Kat, assistant manager), Krista Kosonen (Nora, Mary’s mom), Ember Ambrose (young Mary); Runtime: 110; MPAA Rating: R; producers: James Wan, Michael Clear, Roberto Patino, Shawn Levy, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, Osgood Perkins, Chris Ferguson, Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, Kori Adelson; A24; 2026)
“The amazingly good debut feature film from the 20-year-old director.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
The amazingly good debut feature film from the 20-year-old director Kane Parsons is based on his viral YouTube VHS series “Backrooms,” from 2022. The shorts are on ‘liminal spaces,’ which are like empty interconnected hallways, without the presence of humans or any living things, that can go on forever and leave one with an eerie otherworldly experience.
Parson’s “Backrooms” series featured endless shots of office buildings with pale yellow walls, carpets, tiled ceilings and symmetrical fluorescent lights. These are the sets used in the film that were brilliantly designed by Danny Vermette.
The strange head-trip sci-fi/horror pic is a surreal nightmarish psychological thriller about being imprisoned in one’s memories. It’s something mind-blowing we expect to see from an accomplished director like David Lynch but not from someone so young. It’s boldly written by TV writer Will Soodik.
It opens with a prologue, set in 1990, in the Silicon Valley suburbs of California, as the owner of a failing furniture discount store is seen on videotape walking through the backrooms of his place after discovering an invisible passageway in the wall of the basement. What’s seen in this alternate universe are ugly furniture pieces, wooden chairs, a captain’s wheel, and the store’s “No Credit” sign. The owner sleeps in the store because his wife kicked him out.
The film’s focus shifts to Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve}, the store owner’s therapist, the author of a self-help book called “The Window Within.” She keeps a sentimental cement block in her office that has in it her handprint and one of her unhinged mom (Krista Kosonen). We see flashbacks of her as an adolescent (Ember Ambrose) and how traumatic was her early life, which she might not be completely over with.
The person in the store in the earlier videotape is Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the volatile alcoholic owner of the strip mall discount furniture store called Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. Clark’s upset by his failure to have a career in architecture, his failed marriage, his failed business, and the unsolved electrical problems in the store. He’s a client of Mary’s, wanting to be healed from being inwardly tormented. During his therapy sessions, the relaxed therapist tries to restore his vitality and mental health by providing the therapy needed for his mental pain and fear to be relieved, and to give him hope there’s escape from his bad memories by taking a new path in life.
Attempts to explain what all this means fails, as the film is a blast as long as its enticing, but when it tries to explain things and it can’t it no longer is a blast.That, I believe, is a major problem for a film I was willing to go down the rabbit-hole for hoping it had more gravitas or magic up its sleeve than how it was resolved.
REVIEWED ON 5/28/2026 GRADE: B+
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