A24’s Backrooms Movie Has Critics Floored

Horror has a new obsession, and it lives in the fluorescent-lit, yellow-wallpapered void of the backrooms. A24’s upcoming film Backrooms — opening May 29, 2026 — just had its first press screening, and critics are already losing their minds over it in the best possible way.

The early reactions flooding X paint a picture of something genuinely unsettling and surprisingly artful. Joshua Rothkopf of the Los Angeles Times called it “horror stripped to its essentials: a hallway, a door, knowing that you will go through it. Conceptually, it’s a triumph, a nightmare with its own weather.” He also singled out the film’s young director for particular praise, saying Kane Parsons knows exactly how to chill his audience.

Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic Courtney Howard, who has written for both Variety and the AV Club, was equally floored. “A brilliant, frightening vision. Beautifully claustrophobic, pulse-pounding & freaky AF,” she wrote on X, adding that the scares are top-notch and that both lead actors deliver. “Renate Reinsve & Chiwetel Ejiofor are terrific,” Howard said.

So far, it’s been all raves. No mixed takes, no hedging — just critics apparently sitting in the dark, genuinely rattled.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=owH_yrzbNns%3Fv%3DowH_yrzbNns

From Internet Creepypasta to A24 Horror Tentpole

If you’re not chronically online, here’s the backstory: the backrooms concept is a creepypasta — an internet urban legend — that started circulating in 2019. The premise is deceptively simple and deeply unsettling: imagine “noclipping” out of reality and finding yourself alone in an endless maze of empty, liminal rooms. Beige carpet. Fluorescent hum. No exits. No people. Just the creeping certainty that something is wrong.

The concept went massively viral, but it was Kane Parsons — posting as Kane Pixels on YouTube — who turned it into something genuinely cinematic. His found-footage-style short films gave the backrooms a visual language and a mythology, racking up millions of views and catching the attention of A24 in the process. Now, still a remarkably young filmmaker, Parsons is making his feature debut with a reported $10 million budget and one of the most talked-about horror casts of the year.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=mDjVPiwl3Zc%3Fv%3DmDjVPiwl3Zc

What the Movie Is Actually About

The feature-length story centers on two people pulled into the backrooms against their will. Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a furniture store owner who simply vanishes one day — there one moment, gone the next. His therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), comes to the store looking for him after he disappears. She doesn’t find Clark. Instead, she finds herself just as lost as he is, trapped in the same disorienting, seemingly infinite maze of disused rooms, desperately searching for a way out and a way back to reality.

It’s a smart narrative frame — two people from the same life, stranded in the same nightmare, hunting for each other without knowing if they’re getting closer or further apart. And with Ejiofor and Reinsve as your leads, you’ve got the kind of grounded, emotionally intelligent performances that can make abstract horror genuinely devastating rather than just visually interesting.

A24 is positioning Backrooms as its summer horror event, and given the early critical response, that bet is looking very good right now. May 29 can’t come soon enough.