It begins in a furniture showroom that nobody visits. Strip lights buzz, the mascot grins at empty aisles, and the manager is sleeping in the stockroom. Then a wall in the basement gives way, and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms opens a door onto one of the most unnerving places horror has built in years.
The internet’s favourite liminal nightmare has become A24’s biggest hit, and from today it is streaming on HBO Max in the UK. The world Parsons has made is extraordinary. The story he tells inside it is thinner, but you will not forget the rooms.
Backrooms makes an empty corridor feel like the most dangerous place on Earth, even when its story loses its way.
Movie at a Glance
- UK availability: Streaming on HBO Max from Monday 26 October 2026, and to rent or buy on the main digital stores
- UK cinema release: 29 May 2026
- US availability: Streaming on HBO Max since 25 September 2026
- Distributor: A24
- Director: Kane Parsons
- Writer: Will Soodik, based on Kane Parsons’ YouTube series
- Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell and Avan Jogia
- Runtime: 110 minutes
- Certificate: 15 (UK), R (US)
- Genre: Liminal horror with science fiction
Viewer Match
- Best for: Anyone who has lost an evening to the Backrooms videos, and fans of Severance, House of Leaves and slow, creeping dread.
- Maybe skip if: You want a tightly plotted mystery with clean answers, or constant jump scares.
- Mood and pace: Hushed, hypnotic and suffocating, with one superb burst of panic.
- Cinema or streaming? Streaming works, but turn the lights off and the sound up. The hum of those strip lights matters.
- Spoiler level: Spoiler-free: we only go as far as the first door.
A Man Already Stuck
Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, who runs a failing furniture store in 1990 Santa Clara and spends his therapy sessions blaming everyone but himself. Renate Reinsve is Mary, the therapist who listens with more patience than he deserves. Before anyone finds a hidden door, Clark is already living in a kind of waiting room: not happy, not quite finished, just drifting.
It is a good idea, and the film knows it. When Clark discovers the endless yellow rooms behind his basement wall, his first reaction is not terror but something closer to excitement. He starts mapping them. He brings people down. You can feel the pull of a place where nothing is expected of you, and that pull is far more disturbing than any monster.
The Rooms Are the Star
Parsons made his name building these spaces on YouTube, and on a feature budget he has made them feel horribly real. The carpet looks damp. The wallpaper repeats in ways that feel slightly wrong. Corridors run on past the point where a building should end, and doors appear where no door should be. Cinematographer Jeremy Cox shoots it all with patience, letting the frame sit on an empty room until you start searching it yourself.
A section filmed through a grainy camcorder, as two younger employees played by Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell go exploring, is the closest the film gets to its found-footage roots, and it is properly frightening. Later, a chase through the rooms is staged with real skill, turning all that empty space into a trap. Parsons and Edo Van Breemen’s score barely sounds like music at all. It seems to seep out of the walls, under the drone of the lights.
Two Actors Who Never Overplay It
Casting two Oscar nominees pays off. Ejiofor makes Clark’s self-pity both funny and sad, and his gradual change down in the rooms is played with real restraint. Reinsve, who carries the second half, is even better: alert, sceptical and increasingly frightened, but never shrieking. Both actors react to the impossible the way people actually might, with silence and a racing pulse, and that keeps the film grounded when the geometry stops making sense. Mark Duplass makes the most of a small but important role.
Where It Loses the Thread
The trouble is the script. Will Soodik’s screenplay works hard to explain Clark’s past and Mary’s worries, and much of that backstory arrives as dialogue rather than drama. The rooms are frightening because they make no sense, so every scene that tries to make sense of them lets a little air in. The film’s dreamlike potential is never fully unleashed; it is unsettling rather than truly nightmarish.
The ending wins some of that back. Parsons resists a neat solution and closes on a quiet, understated note that lingers far longer than a big reveal would have. It is the boldest choice in the film, and the one that suggests what he might do next.
Why It Became a Phenomenon
Backrooms cost around $10 million and has taken more than $400 million worldwide, which tells you how hungry audiences are for horror that feels new. It is part of a wave of creator-led films that started life online, and the industry is paying attention, as our Evening News on internet folklore going mainstream showed. It is also the obvious headline of this Halloween week at home. See what else is new in our Weekly Streaming Highlights, and for tonight’s TV and streaming picks, try What to Watch Tonight.
Spoiler-Free Verdict
Backrooms is a stunning piece of world-building with two excellent lead performances, held back by a screenplay that explains too much. The rooms will stay with you long after the story fades.
- Performances: 8/10
- Direction: 8.5/10
- Screenplay: 6/10
- Score: 8.5/10
- Cinematography: 9/10
- Entertainment Value: 8/10
- Overall score: 8/10
Star rating: 4/5
Verdict badge: Worth Seeing
One-line verdict: The year’s most hypnotic horror setting, and a debut that makes you excited for whatever Kane Parsons builds next.
Watch the Official Trailer
Step through the basement wall with the official trailer.
Would you have kept walking once you found the rooms, or turned straight back? Share your spoiler-free reaction to Backrooms.