Kane Parsons' Backrooms (2026) and What It Means for Internet Horror of the Next Generation
Featured images was taken by Nathaniel Lambert.
The following contains spoilers for the Backrooms (2026) movie directed by Kane Parsons.
The success of A24 and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms cannot be overstated. With the film breaking several records at the box office, it has proved itself as a movie that will be around for the rest of time (Tassi). Yet the film does something great other than breaking records; it doesn’t focus on constantly explaining itself or the lore behind it. Instead, Kane Parsons focuses on the mystery and the beautiful mess that is the Backrooms.
Parsons, who is now the youngest director to have a #1 movie at the box office, has been creating backrooms media since 2022 when he, only 16 years old at the time, released The Backrooms (Found Footage).
I had always felt that there was some magnetism to the idea of liminal spaces for me. I started watching Parsons’ content with the web series and kept up, excited when a new entry or story was being told (my favorite by far is The Oldest View because I remember the Valley View Mall from my own childhood). My interest was always at how accurate the story felt at showing off the yellow walls and fluorescents with their “maximum hum-buzz” (Anonymous). Parsons has been know to discuss how the backrooms are not spiritual at all and I think that is something that pulls at me. I love films like As Above, So Below or Constantine where there is symbolism of being trapped in a purgatory or hell-esque prison of some kind, but the backrooms isn’t that. They’re just there.
From the dislike for the movie I’ve read online, a lot of people expected a TikTok or Roblox like adaptation. Various levels in the backrooms and zoo-like world of monsters chasing those who are looking for a way out, but instead, Parsons’ adaptation centers around our world and the backrooms crossing paths due to the magnet-focused experiments and research of the Async corporation. The movie touches on this company through brief scenes and the final 5-10 minutes of the movie, but the story focuses on the backrooms themselves, rather than building Async’s lore or the origins of the backrooms.
I loved this about the story. There doesn’t need to be an origin of this realm. As previously stated, the backrooms are just there, poorly reflected memories of earth.
The movie does start off slow, showing a found footage scene (which is a fan favorite from all the reviews I’ve heard) before showing us a younger version of Mary, and then finally introducing us to Clark. I think there was a lot of misconceptions from the trailer (I am included in having this misconception) that Clark would be the main character, but ultimately, I liked realizing that Mary was our protagonist. I think it makes more sense since she is the one who sort of realizes the development for her character while Clark fails to recognize the change needed before it is too late.
The movie does start off slow, showing a found footage scene (which is a fan favorite from all the reviews I’ve heard) before showing us a younger version of Mary, and then finally introducing us to Clark. I think there was a lot of misconceptions from the trailer (I am included in having this misconception) that Clark would be the main character, but ultimately, I liked realizing that Mary was our protagonist. I think it makes more sense since she is the one who sort of realizes the development for her character while Clark fails to recognize the change needed before it is too late.
While Clark doesn’t recognize the change, I think Parsons does a great job of using his relationship with Still Life Clark to show rather than tell this idea.
The Backrooms is a collection of memories that replicate themselves through various copies, reflected in the teaser trailer (A24 and Parsons) as well as in one of the final scenes in which we see Mary’s living room shift downwards into the various copies. Each of the Still Life creatures are the product of various remembrances of the characters: the electrician, Clark’s ex-wife, Archibald Leland Sutter (the man in the wheelchair). They are all remembered over and over by the people in their lives that we do not see. Clark is labelled as lonely in his therapy session with Mary. The callback we see of Clark is not a flashback of the events, but rather a retelling by Clark. This retelling is a memory of a memory, something he has replayed over and over, and still gets very angry at it. Clark’s still life is a violent creature who connects with Clark because they are both lonely. They are the only ones who don’t hate each other, so when Clark recognizes that what Mary has been telling him, he starts to hate himself. This, in turn, makes Clark’s Still Life violent with him (ultimately killing him).
The fact that it takes time to think and recognize this is another example of how complex Parsons’ film is. It is a beautiful puzzle in which the audience must figure things out to go deeper into it.
Backrooms, and more importantly Kane Parsons, have opened a door for a new era of not just Horror/Thriller movies, but all of cinema. Backrooms in my mind acts as Generation Z’s version of The Blair Witch Project (1999): a film birthed from internet culture of its time that managed to break into the mainstream without compromising the qualities that made it unique in the first place. Parsons is in no way the only Gen Z director making waves right now (Shout out to Curry Barker and Obsession (2026)), but he is the one who has gotten the spotlight.
Kane Parsons has created a masterpiece without any formal schooling other than his own lengthy resume of personal projects, and that’s why he is so inspirational to the generation who will “kill the older gentleman” of Hollywood.
If you’d like to see my (less professional) review of the film, I’ve linked it here.
Referenced Materials:
A24, and Kane Parsons. “Backrooms | Official Teaser HD | A24.” YouTube, 24 Feb. 2026, www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKGhxMi50y8.
Anonymous. (2019, May 12). If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms…[Comment on the online post “unsettling images”]. 4plebs. https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/22661164/#22661164
Tassi, Paul. “5 Box Office Records “Backrooms” Just Broke in One Weekend.” Forbes, 1 June 2026, www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2026/06/01/the-5-box-office-records-backrooms-just-broke-in-one-weekend/.
