Horror movies work best when their scares are rooted in identifiable psychological unease. Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, one of the most discussed American horror movie of the year, based on Parsons’ own internet photo postings and YouTube series, has a brilliant setup: The proprietor of a sad, under-patronized furniture store in a colorless California suburb in the 1990s is, as the movie gets underway, cycling through various low-level crises. In addition to being a frustrated, unsuccessful architect, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) drinks too much, has recently separated from a wife who continues to badger him for money, and is seeing a therapist, Dr. Kline (Renate Reinsve), whose bedside manner seems to be making his depression worse. The breakdown in Clark’s psychic equilibrium is best exemplified by the hapless TV commercials he makes for his business, where he dresses up as a pirate and looks like a fool, thus fortifying the ridiculousness of Clark’s very existence, which already feels like a horror movie in that the viewer automatically wants to turn away from it.

Parsons then injects a supernatural element that at first feels gratuitous. Having decided to sleep in the store as a way to save money, Clark discovers some electrical problems and while checking the breaker in the basement accidently finds he can pass through a wall into a series of yellow-lit backrooms that seem to lead nowhere. Flummoxed by the discovery, he enlists two student filmmakers (Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell) to follow him back through the wall to record the phenomenon, but this time he and his assistants are attacked by an unseen force that traps them in these endless corridors. Since Clark told Dr. Kline about his discovery, she starts to worry when he does not show up for his appointed sessions and goes to the store to investigate. Kline’s experience in the backrooms is sufficiently disorienting to qualify as horror-adjacent, but it isn’t until she encounters Clark in what amounts to an extra-dimensional incarnation that the movie starts to get under your skin in a very unpleasant way.

Though there’s some violence and blood, the movie’s unsettling power emerges from the way it plays on the audience’s experiences with liminal spaces, which often have a discombobulating effect on the senses, epitomizing the idea of an unnatural environment. Kane intensifies the discomfort by increasing these unnatural qualities with weird angles, impossible perspectives, and attendant sounds that seem to emanate from within rather than without. If, in the end, he bites off more than he can chew by trying to provide some kind of meaningful explanation for what we see on the screen, he still provides you with enough fresh nightmare material for a month’s worth of bad sleep. I don’t think I ever need to visit a furniture store again.

Opens Sept. 4 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Marunouchi Piccadilly (050-6875-0075), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Backrooms home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2026 Backrooms Rights LLC, PC Films, LLC