Backrooms (2026) (dir. Kane Parsons)

The problem lately is that most modern horror is entertaining without being truly haunting and thought-provoking. Lately, the credits roll and the film leaves me and I think about what I have to do the next day. I want to be left with something that requires processing what I’ve seen over time. For those who don’t know, I didn’t instantly love my two favorite films, Mulholland Drive and Synecdoche New York on one viewing so the type of cinema I gravitate towards are stories that stay with me despite not understanding them entirely.

So, my desire to write about most new movies has gone quiet, sporadic, almost gone. There are mental health reasons for that and a choice to take time off from writing and focusing on other things, but it’s hard to contain my enthusiasm for the debut film from Kane Parsons. I had a feeling it was right up my alley, or in this case, right up my hallway.

Diving straight into an A24 double feature — The Drama and then Backrooms, with Boots Riley's I Love Boosters between them, to experience joy and invigoration — felt like a long shot due to my recent apathy towards the new. “They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” is what’s been playing on repeat in my head. As much as I loved the other two films I just mentioned, Backrooms is the one I can't stop thinking about. It might be the best horror film I've seen since It Follows but like so many subjective experiences, I can see the inevitable backlash to even having that kind of affirmation on my part. It Follows was over a decade ago. Before that, Lake Mungo was another true-blue favorite.

I'm putting it on the all-timers list after one viewing, which I almost never do. It's also one of the better movies I've seen about cognitive disintegration in the face of the unknown — something I went through a version of two years ago when beginning a new job location, and again, recently for something very different, so maybe that’s why a film like this is clicking with me now. To go into greater detail, I need a second viewing and to process it even further (probably in therapy).

Generalized anxiety is probably the more appropriate term to veer towards when it comes to not knowing how to handle whatever comes next, especially when it’s anticipatory, new and unexpected. Backrooms hit me hard and will likely take up residence in my brain for its portrayal of that feeling. Sometimes viewing a vibe-driven movie is all about time, place, mental state, whether you ate, what happened the night before… The list goes on. You get it, even when there are questions remaining.

The story itself is wildly simple. Clark, a furniture salesman played by the consistently great Chiwetel Ejiofor, walks into an extra-dimensional space and doesn't come back. No, this is not that episode of The Simpsons where Homer walks into a wall only to find himself in 3D.

This is the horror version of what it’s like to lose control of what you’re familiar with - yourself, your surroundings, your rational thinking, what you’ve wanted from life having gone away. In addition to our main character, Clark’s therapist, Mary — Renate Reinsve, who keeps quietly becoming one of the most important actors working today — goes in after him in the last act. That's it. That's the setup.

The backstory of how these two crossed paths is doled out in fragments: a history of toxic behavior on one side revealed through conversation, generational trauma on the other, or a parent who clearly lived with serious mental illness that’s not unlike the kind that Michael McKean’s character had in Better Call Saul. The film lets you choose which to project onto and identify with as much as it is about building dread, tension and crippling uncertainty about what’s behind the corner.

In another A24 movie I'd roll my eyes since a lot of them are playing in the same sandbox of mental collapse. Worn-out Saint Maud territory, trauma-laden-themes-by-the-numbers. But execution is the whole game, and Backrooms gets every choice right from the look, the feel and especially the sound design & score. What's actually frightening about it isn't the labyrinth. It's what the labyrinth will ultimately mean to the individual viewer, which is truly exciting. A character calls the rooms "every place that ever was," and that's the line that's been rattling around in my head for a week.

Pretty much the scene that follows that which does walk into Lynchian territory that hints at a bigger picture, will likely not ever leave my mind. It suggests something almost biblical — a ledger kept of every space a body has occupied, on file long after the body itself has forgotten. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, I keep thinking. Too lofty.

The film also gets at something I've been circling for years: the way self-obsessed men, when their lives become unbearable, build these other worlds to live in rather than face the one they have. Video games. Conspiracy theories. Fantasy realms. A second self online. Late-stage capitalism has flattened the capacity to dream and replaced it with a steady drip of dopamine that hollows out the part of us that used to long for things other than the familiar loop and routine that feels safe and welcome. One could even find a metaphor for doomscrolling here. The experience of doing that is, well, endless and confusing. What's around the corner? Likely something inhuman that keeps us from being the person we once aspired to be.

The only rest left is the kind that erases the personality entirely. Backrooms knows this. The shifting floor plans aren't really other dimensions. They're shadows of memory that blend in with the light. Internal unhappiness given walls and fluorescent lighting. A cry for help manifested in maze form. If you've read House of Leaves, you'll recognize the architectural ancestor — Danielewski's brick of a novel about a house bigger inside than out is more or less the patient zero of 21st-century liminal horror, and Backrooms might be its truest descendant. When I showed the trailer to my partner, she identified that connection immediately because she’s one of the smartest people I know.

The comparisons to Kaufman and Lynch are inevitable and earned, but screenwriter Will Soodik and director Kane Parsons — a ridiculously young 20 — give the film an internal consistency Lynch usually refuses though there are many questions long after the shocking end emerges. The mystery still leaves plenty to chew on. It just doesn't strand you there.

The look of the thing is a nightmare made beautiful and stunning that left me shaken. Severance-like office-drone purgatory bleeding into the interchangeable one-bedroom apartments most of us in our twenties have actually lived in. A magical mystery tour through a prison with no exit. A wonderland weirder than any Alice fell into, scattered with mementos from lives now warped past recognition. A video game world come to life. Something I've dreamed or seen in a building nearby and somehow now seen on a screen.

I'm still in a vulnerable place as of late. The film didn't fix that. What it did is harder to name. For two hours I was inside a mental maze that seemed to know exactly what was wrong with me. But that's also a part of who I am. And when I came out, I wanted to keep thinking, feeling, observing my surroundings differently. Even the architecture of buildings looked askew. There's so much to parse and think about, while at the same time, much like a show like LOST, it leaves you wanting more from this fully realized universe. You can't wait to go back and uncover more despite the sense of dread the film creates.

Just go with it instead of questioning what’s being presented. The lead performances are exceptional. The production design deserves all the attention it rightfully deserves. And my praise is only scratching the surface in terms of what it all means thematically. There are existential examinations about complex behavior going awry, mental health and its treatment but also, this idea of things going away - the human mind as an interior liminal space, subject to become full of exhausting memories which in turn devolve into things that are unclear, distorted and disturbed. Backrooms could become all of our minds, if we're not careful, cognizant and introspective. This is the best film of 2026 so far.