Kane Parsons, 20, Turns 'Backrooms' Into a Trauma Horror on Digital Solitude

4 articles · Updated · Salon · May 30

Parsons’ feature debut expands his viral YouTube series into a 1990s-set horror film that uses the Backrooms’ endless yellow corridors to probe trauma, nostalgia and life lived online.
Clark — played by Chiwetel Ejiofor — enters the liminal maze after therapy sessions over his wife’s departure, turning the supernatural space into a metaphor for grief loops, obsession and refusal to move forward.
About 30,000 feet of practical sets give the film a visceral scale that deepens the dread and makes the internet-born mythology feel physically real on screen.
The review says Parsons’ age is part of the film’s insight: at 20, he captures how rapid technological change, emptied communal spaces and digital isolation have reshaped memory and identity.
It also argues the film’s weakest point is character depth, with Clark and therapist Mary serving more as thematic vessels than fully developed people even as the movie’s ideas remain striking.

How do the film's massive practical sets create a psychological horror that CGI could never replicate?

One year later, has "Backrooms" changed how Hollywood scouts for talent on platforms like YouTube?

Does the film's powerful critique of nostalgia risk becoming the very thing it is examining?