Backrooms Review: Kane Parsons’ Debut Offers Scares and Shows Promise

Kane Parsons has one hell of an origin story: a YouTuber from an extremely early age who taught himself how to create visual effects with Blender software during the COVID lockdown, he arrived on the other side with a fully formed horror series that became a viral sensation. He was nowhere close to graduating high school when that gained traction, and he’s now among the few who can claim to have directed a wide-release studio feature before being legally allowed to drink. There’s been a lot of grumbling about YouTubers-turned-filmmakers recently, with a baseless conspiracy theory doing the social-media rounds suggesting that Parsons must be taking credit for the work of a slumming ghost director (presumably producer Oz Perkins), because what studio in their right mind would sign off on hiring someone so young and relatively inexperienced? Some have knives already out based on his age alone, but I felt more intrigued by the idea of a young person more knowledgeable about the darkest corners of creepypasta web forums and analog horror shorts than the sacred genre texts stepping into a traditional medium. The last thing horror needs is more Sundance-friendly newcomers making overblown allegories for grief after years of obsessively watching prestige horror.

The opening five minutes serve as an ideal primer for anybody unfamiliar with Parsons’ Backrooms web series, and who maybe need a little extra convincing that a 20-year-old YouTuber has some juice: a found-footage recording of a researcher lost in the endless liminal space who gets chased by some unseen force of evil. Even when seen in the extremely low resolution of period-appropriate early-1990s camcorders, there’s something immediately disquieting about the uncanny production design (courtesy of Perkins’ regular collaborator Danny Vermette), where signs appear as their mirror image, various objects of furniture have melted into the floor, and the only living souls are seagulls. It’s an uncomfortable space to be in before the echoes of footsteps begin gathering speed behind our cameraman, and as this tape ends in offscreen devastation, we flash forward approximately ten days to meet Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a failed architect and owner of the fabulously named furniture store Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. 

Clark is recently divorced and sleeping in the showroom, while electrical mishaps in the store lead him to discover the endless network of drab rooms behind his store walls. Although nothing here could be confused with a work of slow cinema, there’s an admirable patience to how Parsons lets his lead wander through this geographically improbable space without relying on scares at each turn. It’s a movie in awe of the expansive bizarro universe it’s created out of the mundane everyday, and that alone proves infectious; it might be the most obvious comparison to make, but it clearly resembles the warped domestic nostalgia of Skinamarink blown up to a bigger scale. 

This is a far more conventional film, however. Clark quickly becomes obsessed with this realm, ranting to his bemused therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) of the elaborate majesty of this unexplained area, which he can’t describe—doing so would be “like describing a dog to someone who has never seen one before.” Flashbacks to Mary’s own tortured childhood punctuate the drama, but on first glance feel like red herrings in a richly detailed world that otherwise refuses to be explained via some straightforward emotional reading. Maybe the most damning thing you can say about Backrooms is also the clearest sign it’s made by a YouTuber: it offers this invitation to ending-explained video essayists to impart their own definitive reading.

After a more extensive, even more terrifying, found-footage search with Clark and his young employees, Backrooms fully shifts perspective to Mary and ditches its analog-horror aesthetics. It’s here where Parsons proves just as skilled making something far closer to a traditional haunted-house tale, with Will Soodik’s screenplay taking cues from The Shining—King’s, crucially, not Kubrick’s more manic interpretation—as we view Clark’s obsession from a terrified outside perspective to see that his alcoholism and blind rage have fueled this as much as anything supernatural. Ejiofor makes a feast of this material, although its conventionality suggests a moment of release after so much time spent trawling through corridors with increasingly disquieting features. 

I’m less sold on the third act, which houses an overblown chase sequence best described as Monsters Inc. meets M.C Escher, and increasingly factors in lore from Parsons’ web series. I was reminded a lot of the ending to M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, which I found clumsy in its attempt to tie a narratively rational scientific conspiracy with an elevator pitch that didn’t need overblown logic to function. Parsons at least leaves one with more questions than answers when all appears to be explained, but the number of closing-stretch easter eggs that point towards his YouTube series does suggest a little too much overthinking around this universe’s lore. 

Then again, I’d rather a filmmaker make slight missteps from too many ideas than too few, and there’s enough here to convince me that Parsons will learn to kill his darlings rather than slavishly condense every good idea he’s had into a coherent statement. He’s far from the first debut filmmaker to fall victim to those impulses, and the clear ambition on display—coupled with the incredible production design, winning lead performances, and effectively sustained dread—suggests he’s more than just a child prodigy who got lucky with a movie deal. 

Backrooms opens on Friday, May 29.