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By Jennifer Asencio | Published
The long-awaited movie adaptation of the YouTube web series Backrooms was released in theaters on May 29, 2026, bringing with it an incredible opening weekend that displaced major blockbusters. It topped the box office with fellow horror movie Obsessionbumping The Mandalorian and Grogu down to third place, not a good spot for the Disney-Star Wars endeavor. After all, Backrooms is not only a low-budget horror flick, but it was directed by a 20-year-old who found fame through independent filmmaking on YouTube.
Lost In Labyrinth
So, what was Backrooms about, and was it worth all the hype?
“Captain” Carl (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has a lot of baggage that he discusses with his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve). He is dissatisfied with his life, has alienated his wife, and is facing financial troubles at his gimmicky furniture store in this 1990s period piece. To top it off, some kind of electrical problem in the store is perplexing him and raising his bill. In trying to solve the problem, he stumbles upon a doorway to another dimension in the basement of his store.
Fans familiar with the web series will recognize the iconic yellow walls of what appears to be an office building with unusual architecture, dead ends, arbitrary items piled in stacks or absorbed into walls, and shadowy pursuers as Carl becomes obsessed with the alternate dimension. He shows up to a session with Mary, disordered and babbling, drawing her to the store and to the maze beyond the dimensional gateway.
Parsons Is The Real Deal
Backrooms definitely delivers fans what director Kane “Pixels” Parsons offered in the web series, but it’s hard for me to say how it could have been received by newcomers to the property because I’ve been a fan since I wrote about the original movie deal in 2023. As a Backrooms story, it was definitely part of Parsons’ found-footage universe, but whether or not that world resonated with people who don’t live on the Internet is another story. Based on the fact that it became an instant box-office hit, it seems to have landed, and its second weekend told a broader story about the film’s true appeal.
The script was written by Will Soodik based on Parsons’ concept, which added a lot of context to the original story. In the web series, the “found footage” filmmaker is simply exploring the setting. Soodik’s additions solidified a plot and provided a definite setting aside from the liminal location of the yellow hallways. It added a shadowy organization that knows about as much about this alternate dimension as any of the other characters. There is even a layer of elevated horror as memories and their reliability are explored as part of the magic of the supernal space. This crystallization was necessary for transferring a series to a feature film while hinting at a much broader world of which audiences will have only seen a glimpse.
Meanwhile, Parsons’ talent as a director cannot be ignored. While this young man isn’t even old enough to drink the champagne at his own premier party, his cinematography was always worthy of his more seasoned contemporaries, and producers like James Wan (Insidious, The Conjuring) allowed him to shine. He uses imagery effectively to get his point across from the very beginning, when he dumps literal garbage on what is supposed to be a happy memory, hinting at future complications. He and Soodik are also very sly, misdirecting the audience about who is really the main character and where the story is truly headed, an effort achieved as much by the cinematography as it is by the script.
Atomic Monster and A24 didn’t throw their weight just behind the web series, but behind a promising young director who had to schedule filming around his high school graduation. The movie found its way to many different audiences, but it also showed that there is hope yet for film as an art.
The Kids Are Alright
I went to see it with my son Bruce, who is the same age as Kane Parsons. He became a fan on his own, but is also part of Parsons’ generation, and the breakout stardom Parsons earned with his project is a beacon of hope for every creative, especially young people. “I am thrilled to see that people my age can follow their dreams,” my son said of Backrooms and Parsons. “I have been a fan of The Backrooms for a while myself and was thrilled to see that the movie was coming out.”
Viewers have been divided about the ending and unconfirmed announcements of future installments of the franchise, but I can’t agree with any of them about either one. Backrooms was a franchise already, in that it was a series of short films with the same labyrinthine theme and setting. Its elevation to a feature film doesn’t change the endless potential within the hallways, and even its plot admits there is plenty more story to tell in the character of Phil, played by Mark Duplass (the Creep franchise), who is as clueless and confused as anyone else despite his higher status.
I can’t condemn neither the film’s continuation into a franchise nor an ending that was as definitive as it needed to be to wrap Carl and Mary’s story with a tight bow. Bruce agreed: “I enjoyed the movie and felt that its ending made sense. If naysayers think they can make a better version of the movie, I would like to see them try. This goes for any piece of media.”
Whatever its controversies, The Backrooms is setting records at the box office, pulling in almost $150 million on its first weekend against a budget of only $10 million. Its second weekend saw it at number 3 with $26 million, with new release Masters of the Universe only just ahead of it at $29 million (Scary Movie 6 topped the weekend with $55 million). For a movie’s second weekend, not only is that not bad, but it nearly overran a major summer blockbuster’s opening weekend. This sends a stark message to big studios trying to feed mindless slop to audiences: that a movie needn’t be expensive or a long-established franchise to be popular; it just needs to be original and interesting.
I think Bruce summed up the movie well for both fans and skeptics alike when he told me, “In a world where information and opinions are at our fingertips, it is important to remember what is opinion and what is fact: the fact here being that a kid Pixel’s age can achieve his goals and make a masterpiece of a movie, the opinion being that others think that they could do better just because they are older. There are moments where adults know better, but this is not one of them.”
Kane Parsons, and the kids, really are alright. Get lost in Backroomsin theaters now.
