I’ll get this out of the way: Kane Parsons can direct. At 22, making his feature debut for A24 from a viral YouTube series he created as a teenager, he has no business being this technically assured. Backrooms is immaculately crafted, suffocatingly atmospheric, and one of the most frustrating cinema experiences of 2026 because for everything it does right, it refuses to do anything else.

In this science-fiction horror film, a doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom, and what lies beyond it shouldn’t exist. Endless corridors. Humming fluorescent light. The creeping, skin-crawling certainty that something is in there with you.

Parsons, who built his reputation on the visual language of liminal spaces, knows this world intimately, and it shows. The sound design alone deserves its own conversation because every creak, every distant echo, every wrong frequency buzz works on your nervous system with a slow burn. You sit up straight and try to control your breathing. And the camcorder footage—grainy, shaky, deeply uncomfortable to watch—is the scariest thing in the film. Which makes it all the more baffling that the rest of it can’t match that energy.

Here’s the problem: Backrooms is all nerve endings and no spine. Nearly two hours of dread that goes absolutely nowhere. Everyone keeps describing the film as Lynchian and yes, fine, but even Lynch gave you something to chew on after the credits rolled, a feeling or a reason. Here? The credits roll and you’re left with nothing but the hum of the air conditioning after the lights in the theatre go up.

I’ll get this out of the way: Kane Parsons can direct. At 22, making his feature debut for A24 from a viral YouTube series he created as a teenager, he has no business being this technically assured. Backrooms is immaculately crafted, suffocatingly atmospheric, and one of the most frustrating cinema experiences of 2026 because for everything it does right, it refuses to do anything else.

In this science-fiction horror film, a doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom, and what lies beyond it shouldn’t exist. Endless corridors. Humming fluorescent light. The creeping, skin-crawling certainty that something is in there with you.

Parsons, who built his reputation on the visual language of liminal spaces, knows this world intimately, and it shows. The sound design alone deserves its own conversation because every creak, every distant echo, every wrong frequency buzz works on your nervous system with a slow burn. You sit up straight and try to control your breathing. And the camcorder footage—grainy, shaky, deeply uncomfortable to watch—is the scariest thing in the film. Which makes it all the more baffling that the rest of it can’t match that energy.

Here’s the problem: Backrooms is all nerve endings and no spine. Nearly two hours of dread that goes absolutely nowhere. Everyone keeps describing the film as Lynchian and yes, fine, but even Lynch gave you something to chew on after the credits rolled, a feeling or a reason. Here? The credits roll and you’re left with nothing but the hum of the air conditioning after the lights in the theatre go up.