If you want better dialogue quality
Choose Exit 8. It scores 4.5 vs 2.8 for dialogue quality, with a 4.2 overall score.
Backrooms Movie Review
Bottom Line
Choose it for immersive liminal dread, extraordinary sets, oppressive sound, and committed performances. Skip it if you need fast pacing, fully developed characters, clear answers, or a conventionally satisfying ending.
Best for
Best for liminal-horror fans, viewers who enjoy analog textures and slow-building dread, and audiences willing to engage with ambiguous psychological themes.
Not for
Skip it if you prefer fast-moving plots, frequent jump scares, fully explained mythology, or endings that provide clear narrative closure.
Verdict
Backrooms succeeds most completely as an audiovisual nightmare. Its enormous yellow sets, warped furniture, analog textures, fluorescent hum, and patient camera work turn ordinary commercial spaces into something oppressive and unfamiliar. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve give the abstract concept emotional weight, while Kane Parsons directs with unusual confidence and a strong instinct for withholding threats. The tradeoff is a conventional feature narrative that cannot always match the purity of the premise. Character motivations can feel thin, the deliberate pacing will test viewers who need constant incident, and the late explanations, monster imagery, and climax divide critics sharply. Even with those weaknesses, the film remains a distinctive, ambitious adaptation whose atmosphere, craft, and lingering imagery outweigh its uneven storytelling.
Feature Scorecards
Summary
40 reviewed features-
Very positive 4.5-5.021 (53%)
-
Positive 3.5-4.413 (33%)
-
Neutral 2.5-3.45 (13%)
-
Negative 1.5-2.41 (3%)
Pros
-
The vast yellow labyrinth is the clearest consensus standout, praised as tactile, uncanny, claustrophobic, and often the film’s real star. Physical sets, warped furniture, and impossible architecture turn bland commercial spaces into nightmare imagery.
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The mix of harsh yellow lighting, analog textures, found footage, forced perspective, and surreal spatial design gives the film a distinctive identity. Reviewers admired how ordinary rooms become both familiar and deeply wrong.
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The performances are a major strength, with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve repeatedly praised for grounding the surreal material in sadness, fear, and human vulnerability. A few critics noted accent or script limitations, but the acting consistently elevates thin passages.
-
Kane Parsons is widely praised for remarkably assured control of mood, spatial tension, and visual horror in his feature debut. Criticism centers on later over-explanation and a few overreaching narrative choices rather than his filmmaking instincts.
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Long corridors, distant noises, hidden figures, and unstable camera movement sustain a persistent sense of danger. Reviewers repeatedly praised the film for making anticipation and uncertainty more frightening than overt attacks.
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Fluorescent hums, metallic groans, distant impacts, and muted ambient noise make the environment physically oppressive. The soundscape is repeatedly cited as essential to the film’s tension and spatial dread.
Cons
-
The film is strongest during restrained exploration rather than overt action. Several reviewers criticized the third-act chase and explicit climax as overblown, generic, or less frightening than the slow build.
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Dialogue is uneven: psychological exchanges can clarify the themes, but several reviewers found scenes mandatory, awkward, or unintentionally strange. The actors often make the lines work better than the script does.
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The film intentionally withholds answers, and that ambiguity can be intriguing and discussion-provoking. It also frustrates viewers when lore becomes either too opaque or too heavily explained, especially late in the story.
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The ending is the most divisive element. Some found the final image haunting, open-ended, or cathartic, while many called the climax anticlimactic, overly conventional, confusing, or obvious sequel bait.
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The premise and atmosphere are stronger than the conventional narrative holding them together. Some reviewers found the story emotionally coherent and compelling, while others saw an underbaked framework stretched around a powerful visual concept.
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The screenplay earns praise for economical exposition, psychological ideas, and character interiority in its best passages. Its weaker sections rely on clunky explanations, uneven dialogue, and late lore that can flatten the mystery.
Cast & Creators
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Production DesignerVermette’s production design receives near-unanimous praise for turning the yellow rooms into vast, tactile, claustrophobic spaces filled with warped furniture and impossible geometry. Many reviewers call the setting the film’s true star.
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DirectorReviewers see Parsons as a strikingly assured young director with exceptional instincts for atmosphere, spatial terror, and visual storytelling. Even critics of the over-explained or overstuffed final act regard his voice and ambition as unmistakable.
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ClarkEjiofor is repeatedly praised for making Clark wounded, frustrating, relatable, and increasingly obsessive without losing emotional credibility. His intensity helps anchor the film when the plot becomes abstract.
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MaryReinsve brings controlled anxiety, bruised sadness, and convincing primal fear to Mary, often communicating more through restraint than screaming. A few reviewers felt the screenplay or occasional accent issues limited her.
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ActorDuplass makes a brief but memorable contribution, deepening the mystery through his cryptic supporting presence. Reviewers describe the turn as stellar or notably effective.
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CinematographerCox’s cinematography helps create the oppressive yellow light and disorienting spatial language that make the rooms feel both expansive and enclosing.
View all 40 feature scores and cast & creators
Compared With Category Average
Compared with other Movies, this product is above average in CGI quality, runtime, rewatch value, near average in scares, audience appeal, below average in action sequences, ending satisfaction.
Comparison summary
40 compared features-
Above average 0.4+ pts higher31 (78%)
-
Same as average within 0.3 pts7 (18%)
-
Below average 0.4+ pts lower2 (5%)
Largest category differences
| Attribute | This product | Category average | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| CGI quality | 5.0 | 2.3 | +2.7 |
| runtime | 4.5 | 2.7 | +1.8 |
| rewatch value | 5.0 | 3.5 | +1.5 |
| production design | 4.9 | 4.0 | +0.9 |
| suspense | 4.7 | 3.6 | +1.1 |
| action sequences | 2.3 | 3.6 | -1.2 |
| realism | 4.5 | 3.3 | +1.2 |
| editing quality | 4.5 | 3.3 | +1.2 |
Consider This Instead
If you want better audience appeal
Choose Leviticus. It scores 4.5 vs 3.8 for audience appeal, with a 4.2 overall score.
If you want better action sequences
Choose The Furious. It scores 4.9 vs 2.3 for action sequences, with a 4.0 overall score.
If you want better story quality
Choose Rose of Nevada. It scores 4.6 vs 3.3 for story quality, with a 4.5 overall score.
FAQ
Is Backrooms genuinely scary?
It is strongest as a slow, oppressive form of horror built on empty spaces, distant sounds, and uncertainty. The scares are usually sparse and effective, though some reviewers found the later creature reveals less frightening.
Do I need to know the YouTube series first?
No. Multiple reviewers said the film works for newcomers, while existing fans receive additional lore, visual callbacks, and found-footage connections.
Is the movie slow?
Yes, it uses a deliberate slow-burn pace with long exploratory passages. That patience builds dread for many viewers but may frustrate anyone who needs frequent plot turns or action.
Are the performances good?
The acting is one of the strongest areas. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve are widely praised for giving emotional credibility to characters whose writing can sometimes feel thin.
Does the ending explain the Backrooms?
Only partly. The conclusion preserves significant ambiguity, but its mix of explanation, monster imagery, and sequel possibilities is the most divisive part of the film.
Sample Expert Reviews We Analyzed
These are a few of the reviews included in our analysis.
Video Reviews
Article Reviews
larsenonfilm.com
Parsons proves to be an expert manipulator of space with the camera.
- Review score
- 3.8
rogersmovienation.com
Here's a thriller that Maurice Escher could have production designed, with Salvador Dalí decorating the sets and Stanley Kubrick behind the...
- Review score
- 4.1
thetraverstake.com
Scary as hell doesn’t begin to describe the horror facing Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofer in the claustrophobic thriller of the summer.
- Review score
- 4.3
rollingstone.com
Kane Parsons takes the premise of his eerie YouTube videos depicting endless, empty spaces and runs with it. The result is existentially...
- Review score
- 4.3
reelviews.net
Calling Backrooms "horror" is probably amisnomer. Although there are horror elements to be found in Kane Parsons'feature debut, this is more...
- Review score
- 3.8
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