Backrooms (2026)

Plot of Backrooms: Sticking to the main plot, Clark the owner of a furniture store is undergoing therapy, the therapist Mary Kline. He has split up with his wife and is living in the basement of the furniture store which he operates, although he is qualified as an architect. He has the boyfriend of his assistant shoot a video of him, dressed as a pirate, publicising the store. His television in the basement he is occupying seems unreliable, and one night in the dark he sees a vertical split in a wall. In that spot he is able to walk through the wall into a vast area of yellow corridors and spaces. He wanders about until something seems to be tracking him so he dashes back to the basement.  During his therapy he tells Mary what’s up but she does not believe him, so he gets Kat, his assistant, with her boyfriend, Bobby, to come with him into the space with their camera. Bobby is dragged off by something out of sight and Kat disappears, but seems to be able to see Clark and warn him of something approaching. When Clark does not return for therapy, Mary visits the store, now deserted, goes down to the basement and finds the portal into the Backrooms. Once inside she is captured by Clark who begins to explain what is going on, and what some deformed immobile characters are. Also in a refrigerator is Kat’s head. Things don’t look good.

Content: There is no sex or nudity; I seem to recollect Clark using a hipflask and he is accused by Mary of being drunk, even when sober. The film opens with footage of a person dashing about in the yellow spaces, using a camera. He drops it and it is picked up and used by an unseen person. Clark is seen making his home in the basement of the store. An electrician finds unused breakers in his electric box. Once in the Backrooms, implied to be some sort of alternative reality there is a constant atmosphere of doom. And once people are captured by the unknown, things are worse. When Mary is kidnapped a now mad Clark explains what it is about, the alternative reality creating characters from the memories of the human visitors, with all their failings and obsessions. By now we have seen flashbacks of Mary’s past and it has not all been sweetness and light. Mary, on the run, triggers a trap set by Async a company researching the space. She is interrogated by their man.

A View: This outing easily achieved the most visible sign of success, recovering its production cost several times over on its first weekend. I admit I did not absolutely get it all, particularly the involvement of the company Async which is relatively important, but it did not matter too much. Perhaps if you have a look at the YouTube stuff first things will be clearer. There were some young men in the screen where my wife and I saw it who obviously had it all at their fingertips. So even if you have never heard of the Backrooms, worth a cinema ticket.

Fun fact: At one point a fly becomes important to the plot. It was just flying about on the set, so they incorporated it.