The path from a viral sensation creepypasta-inspired short film in 2022 to a surprise box office success in 2026 has been a wild one to watch, especially given that the person behind it, director Kane Parsons, kicked it off when he was 16 years old. At least superficially, the concept behind the first feature-length version of the story seems right at home for its distributor and backer, A24, with its hypnotic pacing and treatment of trauma and mental illness as factors in its supernatural terrors. However, even by the most recent horror standards it's remarkable that a film this far from standard mainstream fare could draw in millions of viewers-- and it still delivers some of the most potent scare scenes in a year filled with industry-upending genre titles. You could draw connections between this and any number of previous horror staples like Ju-On, David Lynch, In Fabric, The Shining, [REC], Annihilation, The Descent, and even clear elements of Alice's Adventures in Wonderand, but the execution isn't really indebted to anything else out there. What you get instead is a compelling two-character psychological study set within an uncanny environment that, along with Eddington and Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, represents one of the most direct cinematic warnings about predatory AI and data center takeovers to date.

Recently separated from his wife and child, aspiring architect and struggling furniture store owner Clark (Ejiofor) goes to see local celebrity therapist and author Mary Kline (Reinsve) to deal with his drinking and cruel impulses. After a day filming a TV commercial dressed up as his mascot character, Cap'n Clark, and dealing with a strange electrical wiring oddity in the building, he retires for the evening to sleep in store-- the only roof he has. However, spying a strange light through one of the walls sends him through it and into the backrooms, a labyrinthine network of mostly empty, eerie rooms that, as we've seen in a prologue, are being monitored by a company called the Async Research Institute and have already claimed at least one of its staff. When Mary seems skeptical about Clark's descriptions of his discovery and the presentation of a map of its illogical construction, he recruits two of his employees to chronicle the backrooms with a camcorder. Things go very badly, and soon a curious Mary, who is still haunted by memories of her deeply unstable mother who was committed to an institution, decides to do some investigating of her own.

Though numerous YouTube short films preceded this film, you don't need to watch any of them to follow along here for what amounts to a fairly straightforward story. The presence of numerous veteran actors here helps sell the material, with Ejiofor (nicely situated here between two Mike Falangan projects) and Reinsve (continuing a hot streak from films like The Worst Person in the World, A Different Man, and Sentimental Value) playing off each other so well this could have just been a string of therapy sessions between them. On a technical level the film is an impressive skin crawler, breaking the basics of architectural geometry in ways that keep you tense even when people are simply walking room to room; the eerie ambient sound mix adds to the unease with perpetual electrical noises and sparing but effective use of Dolby Atmos to keep you looking around. The big horror scenes are doled out with restrain and really work As where they need to, including a very harrowing sequence halfway through for our three store employees and some grotesque imagery like that "edible" bit. Interestingly, the violence here is very restrained for the most part; the R rating the film carries is due more to the frequent profanity than anything you actually see.

Not surprisingly, A24 outfitted its highest-grossing film to date with a deluxe special edition available as separate UHD or Blu-ray editions packaged with six collectible postcards. The former format is definitely the way to go if you're equipped, as the highest level of detail really pays off during those expansive backroom sequences. Of course, it's amusing that the first few minutes plays out via interlaced VHS-quality video, but don't worry, it looks great after that. The Dolby Atmos mix is as manipulative and creepy as you'd expect, loading the speakers with wisps of noise that mirror the characters' growing fear. Optional English SDH subtitles are included along with an English audio description track. An audio commentary with Parsons, VFX supervisor Edward J. Douglas, sound designer Eugenio Battaglia, and composer Edo Van Breemen is a rewarding listen wisely focusing on the technical nuts and bolts of the film and stories from the set rather than interpreting any of it for the viewer. From the intricacies of the sound mixing to the creation of vintage distressed VHS video, the creation of the backrooms themselves, and the 1990 setting, there's a lot of material here-- and some funny bits like multiple people getting lost on set when any of the walls go moved around. Not long after the film hit theaters, it was replaced with a new edition tagging on a new short film, "Everything Must Go" (16m7s), which serves as a direct prologue leading to the opening moments of the main feature. That's included on the disc as well (you can watch it before the movie without spoiling anything), followed by a "Building the Backrooms" featurette (25m50s) with the cast and crew (including Parsons, producer Chris Ferguson, cinematographer Jeremy Cox, production designer Danny Vermette, costume designer Mica Kayde, Ejiofor, Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Lukita Maxwell, Finn Bennett, and the amazing Robert Bobroczkyi) chatting about the project's "liminal space" concept intercut with behind-the-scenes footage, Blender concept designs, and coverage of the original shorts. Then a "VFX & Scene Breakdown with Kane Parsons" (15m58s) walks you through the process of going from a preliminary concept for a backrooms sequence through bringing it to life with actors passing through "doors." Then Parsons returns for a 1m45s prop walkthrough including Cap'n Clark ephemera and a key monstrous head, a 5m24s VFX breakdown of the opening scene and a 2m6s breakdown of the den descent with optional commentary by visual effect supervisors Ed Douglas and Calvin Romeyn.

Reviewed on August 25, 2026