A24's Backrooms Soars on Rotten Tomatoes as Kane Parsons Delivers a Breakout Debut
At 20, Kane Parsons makes his directing debut—and the first wave of online reviews has already landed.
Let’s be honest, it’s not every week a horror film comes out that was made by a 19-year-old YouTuber and picked up by A24, but that’s the reality with Backrooms—the studio’s latest foray into unsettling cinema. Kane Parsons, who started this whole creepy-liminal-spaces thing with his viral video series, has made it to the big screen, and there’s been plenty of noise about whether he and the film can live up to the hype. Spoiler: most critics think he’s absolutely held his own, but there’s still a few grumpy faces in the crowd.
First Impressions: Critical Reception
So, what’s the verdict? As of now, Backrooms is sitting pretty with an 85% "fresh" score on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 61 critic reviews. Not quite enough to earn the "Certified Fresh" label just yet, but the early signals are good—especially for a directorial debut by someone barely out of sixth form.
The general critical mood can be summed up with words like "frightening", "unnerving", and "creepy"—all markers of a horror film doing its job. Reviewers have been tipping their hats at how the film dives deep into the distinct unease of liminal spaces (think: endless corridors and mindless office cubicles), the sort of atmosphere that made the original YouTube videos blow up online in the first place.
'Backrooms is a vibe movie that tries to tap into complex feelings that, by design, cannot be fully understood.'
That’s from MovieWeb’s review, which gets to the heart of what the film’s up to—it’s less interested in tidy answers and more about unsettling the audience in ways that are hard to explain, but easy to feel.
Still, not everyone’s convinced. TheWrap’s take was far from glowing, dismissing the film as "a sightseeing tour of disquieting office buildings" and arguing that the plot is a bit pointless. Given the deliberately mysterious, ambiguous origins of Parsons' YouTube series, you can see why some viewers might bounce off that approach.
Cast and Crew: Who’s Who?
- Kane Parsons (Director) – YouTube’s liminal-space mastermind, aged 19 during production.
- Renate Reinsve – Bringing some proper acting pedigree.
- Chiwetel Ejiofor – Always a solid shout for anything atmospheric and unsettling.
- Mark Duplass – Indie mainstay, has a knack for offbeat tension.
The Bigger Picture: Context and Competition
This year’s been a bit of a standout for younger filmmakers making the leap from the internet to the multiplex. Kane’s not the only one in the game: we’ve also got Markiplier adapting Iron Lung and Curry Barker's Obsession, the latter already causing a stir at the box office with a huge bump in its second week.
Backrooms drops at an interesting moment. There’s two other horror films already in cinemas—Passenger and Obsession—so it’s got competition, and even more big releases on the way. For a low-budget, independent horror with online roots, it’ll be relying pretty heavily on social media buzz, the built-in YouTube fanbase, and people’s growing obsession with liminal spaces (which, honestly, meme culture has all but claimed as its own).
Expectation is still in flux—more reviews are due in, so that Rotten Tomatoes score could shift either way. Still, for a debut feature from someone barely old enough to buy his own pint, Backrooms is shaping up as a proper conversation starter for indie horror.