Backrooms: The Kids Do Silent Cinema

Going to see Backrooms (2026), I had an almost unheard-of theatrical experience. Completely surrounded by teenagers, one of whom spent the previews talking about how the only vegetable she’s ever eaten was a potato, my wife and I were not sure what to expect. We do not follow the online video series or the Roblox game on which the film is based. And yet, not only did the movie impress me; it did something far harder: Backrooms got a theater full of teenagers to quietly and intently watch what may as well have been Battleship Potemkin (1925). They even clapped at the end.

I don’t mean that 20-year-old Kane Parsons’ feature debut is as good as Eisenstein. This is more-or-less a silent film. Parsons’ primary language here is visual—lots of canted angles, camcorders, and shadows cast by fluorescent lights. For those who don’t know the “lore” behind the Backrooms universe of images, videos, and games, the idea is the horror of the endless office. Its origins are in a 2019 4chan post. Imagine bleak, yellowish hallways that bend into a maze, random lamps, couches, and tables stacked and strewn in indiscernible ways. Clocks tick, footsteps fall—from where? Who can say? Backrooms is far more like The Haunting (1963) than another entry in The Conjuring franchise (2013-present).

There are easily 10- and 15-minute sections of this film without any dialogue, often with minimal music. If someone barely old enough to vote can get kids not old enough to vote to sit through and enjoy that kind of silence, I will not protest. I’m delighted to see the movie make nearly $200 million on a $10 million budget. Somebody give this kid more money.

There is much to say about the text of the film too. Do the ever-growing backrooms represent the unconscious dimensions of human life, constantly replaying and distorting our lives and ourselves in ways we can only half-access? To what degree does the film tarry with the inadequacy of contemporary psychology in understanding how we tick? These are really thinly veiled expressions of my own hang-ups (my answers are “yes” and “a lot”). But to say more would mean spoilers, and I don’t see a reason for that when the film is still in theaters.

What’s perhaps most fascinating about Backrooms, in any case, is its relationship with the analog, pre-internet world. The franchise is for those under 18, sometimes quite a bit younger. The game, videos, and much of the film focus on fuzzy VHS cameras, shooting from a first-person perspective. The poorer visibility makes the beige hallways, modeled on 80s and 90s offices, all the more disconcerting. I couldn’t help but read this impulse as equal parts fascination and horror at the pre-internet world. Everything is tactile, more magical, actually threatening. In a word, it’s all more real (the Unconscious, anyone?).

This is all to say that I’m excited for what Kane Parsons does next.