Backrooms Review: A24's Creepiest Experiment Just Dropped — And Everyone's Split on 20-Year-Old Kane Parsons

When a YouTube Teen Becomes Hollywood's Most Controversial New Director

The reviews for A24's Backrooms dropped today, and they've set off one of the most heated debates in horror cinema this year. Directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons — who started making liminal space videos on YouTube at just 16 — the film is already being compared to David Lynch's Eraserhead, The Shining, Severance, and Twilight Zone.

Coming off a massive year for digital creators turned filmmakers — including Markiplier's Iron Lung grossing $50 million and Curry Barker's Obsession pulling in nearly $80 million on a tiny $1 million budget — Backrooms represents A24's biggest bet yet on the viral creator to Hollywood pipeline. With producers like James Wan, Osgood Perkins (director of Longlegs), and Shawn Levy backing the project, the studio is clearly banking on this becoming a franchise.

The Premise: Walking Through Walls Into a Nightmare

Chiwetel Ejiofor delivers what Deadline called one of his most memorable roles as Clark, a divorced furniture store owner running Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire — complete with cringe-worthy pirate TV commercials. When Clark discovers he can walk through his store's walls, he enters an endless maze of yellow-lit corridors and empty rooms — the legendary Backrooms from internet creepypasta lore.

Renate Reinsve plays Dr. Mary Kline, Clark's therapist who initially thinks he's losing his mind before investigating the phenomenon herself. The screenplay by Will Soodik adapts Parsons' viral YouTube shorts, which turned a single eerie photo from an abandoned furniture store renovation in Wisconsin into a multi-million-view horror sensation.

Critics Are Completely Divided

Here's where things get spicy. Deadline absolutely loved it, calling Backrooms "so friggin' creepy and inventive you won't be able to get it out of your head." Variety praised Parsons as a wizard of mood and predicted the film could become the first experimental horror film that makes $25 million in its opening weekend.

But The Hollywood Reporter called it "creepy but underbaked," Yahoo UK said the film "gets trapped in its own maze" with "brilliant production design and not much else," and IndieWire described it as "both mind-bending and brain-freezing." The divide comes down to this: if you want traditional scares and a neat plot, you will probably hate Backrooms. If you want an atmospheric, deeply unsettling experience that lingers like a bad dream, you might love it.

Can It Match Obsession's Box Office Dominance?

The big question: can Backrooms rival Obsession's $79.7 million worldwide run? The Memorial Day weekend was already crowded with The Mandalorian and Grogu ($82 million domestically) and Paramount's Passenger ($10.5 million). But Backrooms has a built-in fanbase of millions of YouTube viewers waiting for this since 2022. A24 is banking on that fandom translating into real ticket sales this weekend.

Whether Backrooms becomes A24's next breakout hit or a divisive cult experiment, 2026 has undeniably become the year of the YouTuber-turned-filmmaker. Kane Parsons went from posting creepy videos at 16 to directing Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve in an A24 feature at 20. That's a trajectory that would make even Orson Welles blink.

Backrooms opens in theaters this Friday, May 30, 2026.