{"id":719,"date":"2026-05-29T04:10:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T04:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=719"},"modified":"2026-05-29T04:10:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T04:10:30","slug":"review-backrooms-delivers-a-unique-brand-of-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=719","title":{"rendered":"Review: &#8216;Backrooms&#8217; delivers a unique brand of terror"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<p>Bay Area content creator Kane Parsons pushes back on conventional storytelling, and his hypnotic approach results in one of 2026\u2019s most exhilarating debuts, a existential head trip that GoPros us into a human subconscious besieged by misshapen memories that trap and hold you hostage.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=717\">Letters: Dana Eaton is the right pick for Contra Costa schools chief<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED:\u00a0This is the creepiest strip mall in San Jose, according to \u2018Backrooms\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Painful shards from the past cut deep and take on nightmarish properties in the titular Escher-like \u201cbackrooms,\u201d hidden behind a basement wall at an underperforming 1990s San Jose furniture store. It is there that emotionally stunted, rage-roiled store owner Clark (Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor) makes his memorable journey. He\u2019s a defensive single guy bemoaning the death of a relationship while shouldering a twilighting Cap\u2019n Clark\u2019s Ottoman Empire business he owns. After exploring those backrooms himself, he persuades two 20something shop assistants (Lukita Maxwell and Finn Bennett) to enter the mouth of madness where room upon room vibe to the strangeness of David Lynch\u2019s Red Room from \u201cTwin Peaks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span><iframe allowfullscreen=\"true\" class=\"youtube-player\" height=\"360\" loading=\"lazy\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0HjdiohVOik?version=3&amp;rel=1&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;fs=1&amp;hl=en-US&amp;autohide=2&amp;wmode=transparent\" style=\"border:0;\" width=\"640\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The yellow-ish, claustrophobic spaces and serpentine corridors they stumble around in are often spartan but contain cluttered piles of discarded furniture, clothing and more. Freakier than all that is a menacing unseen but very vocal entity that walks loudly and can make the blood run cold. Production designer Danny Vermette created these escape rooms, which align to the dark spirit of director Jonathan Glazer, Tod Browning and, of course, Lynch and Stephen King, the landscape of purgatory-like nightmares. But this is no copycat even if it does shadowbox with the same freaky, trapped circumstances of Genki Kawamura\u2019s \u201cExit 8,\u201d and other works identified with liminal spaces genre.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=715\">Letters: Measure D would help authority care for open space<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Parsons\u2019 hugely popular viral 22-volume YouTube \u201cBackrooms\u201d creepypasta web series serves as the creative mojo for screenwriter Will Soodik (\u201cWestworld\u201d), and both have chosen not to clutter the film with dense slabs of explanatory dialogue, and it\u2019s all the better for it. They clearly trust their audience to sift through the meaning and mythology of \u201cBackrooms\u201d and debate about it afterwards. (The sound design, visual and special effects, and particularly the eerie soundtrack from Parsons and Edo Van Breemen accentuate and stimulate the strangeness.) The conduit for exploring what influenced Clark\u2019s shaky mental state comes in the form of the seemingly calm and put-together therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve, an Oscar nominee for \u201cSentimental Value\u201d), author of the self-help tome \u201cThe Window Within.\u201d Telling more than that spoils what happens. And even though the film\u2019s third act works from a psychological and thematic standpoint, it doesn\u2019t quite zap you with scares. No matter. \u201cBackrooms\u201d is like a psychological Rubik\u2019s Cube you\u2019re trying your darndest to figure out. It\u2019s worth all the mental gymnastics. Ejiofor and Reinsve keep pace with the material and are both ever so facile at bringing to life two characters who are more and less than what they seem. \u201cBackrooms\u201d keeps you off balance but one thing is clear \u2014 Kane Parsons is enormously talented and a voice we\u2019ll be hearing from in the years to come. An extra treat for Bay Area fans is spotting all the local references (a Santa Cruz shirt worn by Clark, the street location of the store), even if it wasn\u2019t filmed in the South Bay.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=713\">What to watch: \u2018Tuner\u2019 is a winner and Leo Woodall is the key<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Details: 3\u00bd stars out of 4; opens May 29 in theaters.<\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kane Parsons&#8217; horror film is adapted from his viral YouTube series about a horrifying extradimensional area. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-things-to-do"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Review: &#8216;Backrooms&#8217; 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