A24's YouTube Phenom Built a Box Office Monster—But Is Backrooms Actually Terrifying?

When a 20-year-old filmmaker’s viral YouTube shorts catch A24’s attention, you’d expect a promising indie project, not a runaway box office hit. But Kane Parsons’Backrooms just became the independent distributor’s biggest domestic release ever, pulling in over $100 million in its first six days and dethroning Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Supreme. That’s the kind of momentum that makes studios take notice—and makes horror fans wonder if the hype matches reality.

Parsons’film, set in the 1990s, plunges us into a found-footage descent through endless office mazes with Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark, an alcoholic furniture store owner whose exploration of a liminal alternate reality drags his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), along for the ride. The premise alone carries that uncanny dread the original internet creepypasta promised: architecture that doesn’t make sense, silence that amplifies every sound, and the creeping sense of being completely lost. Parsons clearly understands how to weaponize these elements—his earlier shorts demonstrated that much.

Yet here’s where the machinery gets exposed: the actual scares land at a solid 6 out of 10 across the board. The suspense mirrors A Quiet Place, leaning on eerie silence and strategically placed jump scares that don’t always deliver when you expect them. There’s genuine craft in the sound design and in scenes like a Christmas-themed room that grows progressively more unsettling. The gore factor stays remarkably restrained at a 2, favoring goosebumps over viscera. Where things get complicated is spookiness—the film nails the immediate terror of being trapped in an impossible maze, combining mazeophobia with existential dread. But the moment you understand the actual mechanics of how the Backrooms work, that lingering haunted feeling starts to evaporate.

And this is where suspension of disbelief becomes the real antagonist. The film’s biggest vulnerability is the choices its characters make. When you can exit this nightmare by simply turning around and walking back through the same wall you entered, it’s hard to muster much sympathy for people who willingly venture deeper or stay far longer than common sense would suggest. The threat loses teeth when the escape route is that straightforward. It’s the difference between being hunted and voluntarily walking into danger—the psychology doesn’t land the same way.

Backrooms succeeds at what it aims for: creating an unsettling atmosphere and demonstrating that Parsons has real technical chops in manipulating tension and visual unease. The production values are sharp, the world-building is convincing, and it absolutely delivers on the promise of making audiences feel things they’d rather not experience. But as a film that’ll burrow into your brain after the credits roll, the script’s structural weaknesses work against the scares. It’s a confident, accomplished debut that proves YouTube talent can make studio horror work—just maybe not quite the masterpiece its box office numbers suggest. For die-hard horror fans and jump-scare-sensitive viewers alike, it’s solid entertainment with a few hours of genuine tension. Just don’t expect to lose sleep over people who had the good sense to turn around and chose not to.