The Backrooms film left me with more questions than answers

Kane Parsons has a long history with the Backrooms through his web series, including the viral Found Footage installment, so I wasn’t worried about the film’s authenticity. I did have concerns about whether Parsons could explain the backrooms to newcomers while satisfying long-time fans, whether the story would hold up at feature length, whether characters would be well rounded without eclipsing the backrooms itself, and whether the entities would be used as a cheap crutch.

After watching, the film answers the first three concerns and leans on the entities in a way that feels nostalgic to the games rather than purely exploitative. Parsons keeps the backrooms allegorical to memory loss and remains faithful to his established format, so the movie often feels like watching one of his web episodes in a cinema.

The Async Institute and the hostility of the backrooms are established early, and the adaptation fits into Parsons’ existing series while remaining accessible to viewers unfamiliar with his work.

backrooms film, kane parsons, found footage, web series, async institute, entities, memory loss, adaptation, feature length, allegorical horror