**Score: 3/10 — An Engaging Walk to Nowhere**
I don't like movies that go nowhere, don't make any sense, or lack an actual ending. And *Backrooms*? It's the poster child for all three. I feel like I've wasted a part of my life that I will never get back... time that could have been better spent watching a different movie.
The concept is solid. Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old director behind the viral YouTube series, brings the internet's favourite liminal space nightmare to the big screen. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a failed architect and struggling furniture store owner who discovers a doorway in his basement to an infinite labyrinth of yellow walled, fluorescent lit rooms. Renate Reinsve plays his therapist, Mary, who follows him in. The production design is genuinely impressive the Backrooms feel unsettlingly real and deeply disorienting.
But that's where the praise ends.
**Having said that, the movie was engaging and I didn't realise that I didn't like it 'til the credits rolled.** I was invested, the atmosphere is thick, the dread is palpable, and Ejiofor's performance is committed. The first 70 minutes deliver exactly what you'd hope: eerie corridors, unsettling silence, and a creeping sense that reality itself is unravelling .
Then the film loses its footing. The momentum shifts, the tension dissipates, and the narrative attempts to add meaning without committing to anything concrete. Clark explains that the Backrooms"misremembers" people, creating imperfect replicas of reality. The monster, revealed as a distorted, pirate costumed version of Clark himself, kills him in a moment that lands with a dull thud. Mary escapes, or does she? The final shot shows a malformed replica of Mary slumped in an interrogation chair, and we're left with ambiguity that feels more like creative cowardice than artistic choice.
It's the kind of ending that thinks it's being clever but is really just being lazy. The film offers no solutions, no rules, no answers, just a mountain of unanswered questions and an audience that's stopped caring. I was left with... well, nothing. No resolution, no catharsis, no desire to ever revisit this world. Many viewers share this frustration, audience reviews are split, with some praising the atmosphere and others decrying the hollow, confused ending.
It earns its 3 points for the production values, which ain't half bad. The set design, cinematography, and Ejiofor's performance deserve some credit. But the story goes nowhere, the ending is empty, and the experience left me feeling cheated. I could have spent those 105 minutes on something that actually respected my time.**Score: 3/10 — An Engaging Walk to Nowhere**
I don't like movies that go nowhere, don't make any sense, or lack an actual ending. And *Backrooms*? It's the poster child for all three. I feel like I've wasted a part of my life that I will never get back... time that could have been better spent watching a different movie.
The concept is solid. Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old director behind the viral YouTube series, brings the internet's favourite liminal space nightmare to the big screen. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a failed architect and struggling furniture store owner who discovers a doorway in his basement to an infinite labyrinth of yellow walled, fluorescent lit rooms. Renate Reinsve plays his therapist, Mary, who follows him in. The production design is genuinely impressive
