‘Backrooms’ Review: Kane Parsons’ A24 Masterpiece Redefines Modern Horror
There is a specific, primal terror in the familiar made foreign. It is the architectural equivalent of the Uncanny Valley—spaces designed for human occupancy that are completely, inexplicably devoid of it. For years, this collective digital anxiety existed as a niche subgenre of internet folklore known as "The Backrooms." Today, that subculture undergoes a spectacular, terrifying evolution on the silver screen.
Directed by 20-year-old prodigy Kane Parsons—who shocked the internet in 2022 with his viral analog horror short—the feature-length adaptation of Backrooms is not just a triumph of speculative fiction; it is one of the most intellectually challenging and visceral horror films of the decade. Backed by indie powerhouse A24, Parsons has transitioned from a YouTube sensation into a cinematic auteur with astonishing ease, delivering a masterclass in slow-burn tension that will leave audiences questioning the very walls around them.
From Viral Sensation to Cinematic Milestone
To appreciate the gravity of Backrooms, one must understand its origins. In January 2022, a teenager named Kane Parsons uploaded a short titled "The Backrooms (Found Footage)" to his YouTube channel, Kane Pixels. The video quickly amassed tens of millions of views, praised for its photorealistic CGI, oppressive atmosphere, and flawless execution of analog horror tropes.
When A24 announced they were partnering with horror heavyweight James Wan’s Atomic Monster and Chernin Entertainment to produce a feature film helmed by the teenage creator, skeptics doubted whether a short-form YouTube concept could sustain a two-hour narrative. Those doubts are shattered within the first ten minutes of Backrooms. Parsons, alongside screenwriter Roberto Patino, has constructed a deeply compelling narrative framework around the mythos without sacrificing the enigmatic ambiguity that made the original concept so terrifying.
The Cast: Grounding the Inexplicable
An abstract horror concept like "noclipping" out of reality requires immense human gravity to prevent it from feeling like a mere technical exercise. The film achieves this through its inspired, high-caliber casting:
- Chiwetel Ejiofor as Dr. Marcus Vance: Ejiofor delivers a towering performance as a brilliant theoretical physicist working for a shadowy research initiative in the late 1980s. His intellectual arrogance slowly unravels into existential despair as his equations fail to map the non-Euclidean geometry of the maze.
- Renate Reinsve as Elena: Reinsve, the breakout star of the critically acclaimed Norwegian drama The Worst Person in the World, plays an urban designer who accidentally slips through a spatial seam. Her performance is incredibly physical; she embodies the raw, animalistic panic of a modern-day Minotaur’s victim trapped in an endless labyrinth of drywall and fluorescent glare.
The dynamic between Ejiofor’s academic obsession and Reinsve’s desperate survival instinct provides the emotional backbone of the film. Their paths do not cross in conventional ways—which is a brilliant narrative choice by Patino—but their parallel experiences paint a devastating portrait of isolation.
The Architecture of Dread
What makes Backrooms so uniquely unsettling is its devotion to architectural monotony. There are no gothic castles or haunted houses here. Instead, the horror is built from:
- Endless Yellow Wallpaper: The sickly, institutional yellow of the walls evokes a feeling of sterile decay.
- Damp, Stained Carpeting: A tactile horror that practically radiates a musty, mildewed scent into the theater.
- Monotonous Fluorescent Lighting: The constant, flickering overhead lights cast an unnatural, shadowless glow that distorts spatial depth.
- The Hum-Buzz: The low-frequency, auditory assault of industrial ballast humming, which serves as the film's oppressive, omnipresent white noise.
Parsons and director of photography Ari Wegner utilize wide-angle lenses to warp perspective, making hallways look infinitely long and ceilings oppressively low. The set design is a triumph of psychological oppression, transforming mundane office aesthetics into a hostile, alien environment.
The Seamless Integration of Practical and Digital VFX
One of the biggest hurdles for any analog-to-digital transition is the loss of tactile realism. Parsons solves this by blending massive practical sets constructed in soundstages with invisible, high-fidelity CGI. The transition between the real world of 1989 and the liminal maze is handled with a seamless, single-take shot that defies logical explanation.
This hybrid approach lends the impossible geometry of the Backrooms a physical weight that CGI alone could never achieve. The dirt on the walls, the pooling water on the carpets, and the dust motes dancing in the yellow light are all rendered with meticulous precision, blurring the lines between reality and virtual simulation.
The Sound of the Void
Traditional horror relies heavily on orchestral swells and sudden jump-scare stinger chords. Backrooms rejects this completely, opting for a deeply unsettling diegetic soundscape. The hum of the fluorescent lights is more than a background detail; it is a character in its own right. It modulates in pitch and intensity, mirroring the psychological deterioration of our protagonists.
When silence does occur, it is deafening. Every footstep on the damp carpet, every desperate breath, and every distant, unidentifiable scrape echoes with terrifying clarity. The minimalist score, composed by Parsons himself alongside electronic experimentalists, blends seamlessly with the ambient noise, creating an industrial, drone-heavy atmosphere that lingers long after the credits roll. Read more about the psychological effects of low-frequency sound on the human mind via Wired.
A Bold New Vision for Horror
At its core, Backrooms is a commentary on cosmic insignificance and the horror of the mundane. It taps into modern anxieties about isolation, urbanization, and the feeling of being trapped in bureaucratic, infinite systems. Unlike standard monster movies, the threat in Backrooms is not merely what lies around the corner, but the corner itself.
By trusting a 20-year-old director with a multi-million-dollar studio budget, A24 has shown that the future of cinema lies in embracing digital-native creators who understand how modern audiences consume and experience fear. Kane Parsons has not only validated his online origins; he has elevated them into a monument of modern cinematic horror.