Parents' Guide to Backrooms

Unique, ambitious, and unsettling, this downbeat but impactful horror movie makes use of spooky "liminal spaces" to explore themes including trauma, anxiety, identity, memory, and imagination. In 2022, YouTuber "Kane Pixels"—now credited as Kane Parsons—shocked the internet with the first of his short Backrooms horror movies, which was crafted to look like it was shot on handheld VHS video and set in an endless series of rooms haunted by mostly unseen creatures. Expanding Backrooms to feature length is a feat not without its growing pains; even though it's full of dialogue about psychology and memory, the characters remain a bit on the thin side. (Clark, despite Ejiofor's fine performance, is an especially bitter character.)

But what it lacks in emotional resonance, the movie more than makes up for in physical dread and food for thought. The rooms are colored a ghastly yellow and lit by soul-sucking overhead lighting, like the worst office building imaginable. There are crannies and partitions everywhere that could be hiding something. Random bits of furniture and other objects suggest the presence of humans but also some kind of menace. The further the characters explore, the more chance there is of getting lost and never getting out. But each room reveals something new, so it's hard to stop. Backrooms takes some mind-bending turns that perhaps go a little too far and may remind viewers of how effective the shorts were. This hits a little differently, but it's still an admirable and unforgettable chiller.