Film Review - Backrooms (2026)

Backrooms is based off of the YouTube Videos and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark who runs the Captain Clark’s Ottoman Empire Furniture Store and has been kicked out of his house in a separation so one night while putting his feet up in the shop he notices a strange power fluctuation and goes to investigate and finds a series of rooms all empty under his shop.

Backrooms for most of its runtime worked pretty well for me and firstly that is because the film has a great premise and setup: The finding of strange empty rooms underneath where you might work or live and the design of these rooms is fantastic as is the camerawork because when Clark and others go to explore it it has an inherent spookiness and danger to it that feels real especially when people take cameras into empty and abandoned buildings which has that very same feel to it.

The film also has some good performances primarily from Ejiofor as Clark and Renate Reinsve as Dr Kline Clark’s therapist who begins to suspect her patient is losing his mind and both do very well in their roles.

But where this film lost me was in its payoff as I sat there in the cinema really intrigued by the setup and premise but I also thought as it went on “This better have a good payoff” and sadly it does not as the climax of the film ties itself up in convoluted answers and story resolutions that make very little sense and aren’t really built up that well that when it was over I thought to myself “That was stupid”

And so that was Backrooms and it’s okay, but I’ve seen better horror films, 2 out of 5.