A strong yes for horror fans who like liminal dread, mystery-box escalation, and a few genuinely striking set pieces. The appeal is less about plot mechanics than atmosphere: disorientation, spatial unease, and the feeling of being trapped inside a place that should not exist.
Backrooms
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Horror · Mystery
Wed · 1h 51m
Director: Kane Parsons
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Finn Bennett
Overview
A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.
Director
Kane Parsons
Cast
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Finn Bennett
Curator Review
Verdict
A strong yes for horror fans who like liminal dread, mystery-box escalation, and a few genuinely striking set pieces. The appeal is less about plot mechanics than atmosphere: disorientation, spatial unease, and the feeling of being trapped inside a place that should not exist.
Best for
viewers who love liminal-space horror and uncanny environments
fans of slow-burn mystery with bursts of intense imagery
audiences who enjoy internet-born horror concepts translated to feature length
people looking for a modern, experimental horror experience
Skip if
you want a tidy, fully explained mythology
you dislike ambiguity or open-ended storytelling
you prefer character-driven horror over atmosphere-first dread
you are not interested in found-footage-adjacent or experimental visual language
Overview
Backrooms turns a simple premise into a pressure chamber of unease: a doorway in an ordinary retail basement opens into something vast, sterile, and wrong. The film’s best quality is how it makes space itself feel predatory, using repetition, scale, and silence to create a kind of horror that is more suffocating than merely claustrophobic.
Worth noting
It works especially well when it commits to uncertainty. The first stretch is all drift and disorientation, and the movie understands that the scariest thing about a liminal place is not what lives there, but how quickly it erodes your sense of direction, time, and self.
Bottom line
Not every idea lands with equal force, but the standout sequences are memorable enough to justify the ride. If you respond to horror that feels like an anxiety dream rendered as architecture, this is an easy recommendation.
Top Letterboxd reviews
-ˏˋ mak ˊˎ- (4★) · 75959 likes
white boys are wearing crop tops in horror movies again god bless
lia (3★) · 69333 likes
describing this movie is like trying to describe a dog to someone who’s never seen one before
Yashley (4★) · 55510 likes
They should just map the backrooms using Strava
itscharlibb · 45401 likes
kind of i think im gonna die in this house vibes ?
starstruck (3★) · 41931 likes
the only time retail workers actually went and checked the back