Backrooms Ending Explained: Why The Finale Has Fans Divided
Backrooms premiered last week, and that ending is already a war zone. Kane Parsons’ big-screen take on his viral horror series, scripted by Will Soodik, has fans split over what the finale really means — even with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve anchoring the descent.
Right, so A24 have dropped their latest horror project, 'Backrooms', and it’s fair to say the ending has got fans properly split down the middle. If you’ve watched the film, chances are you’re either impressed by the weirdness or left scratching your head, wondering what you’ve just seen. If you’ve not seen it yet—come back to this after. Spoilers are incoming.
So, what’s 'Backrooms' about?
'Backrooms' is directed by Kane Parsons, with Will Soodik and Roberto Patino behind the script. James Wan and Michael Clear are producing, which is always a mark of potential chaos. The cast has Chiwetel Ejiofor leading as Clark, with Renate Reinsve as Mary, alongside Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lucite Maxwell, and Avan Jogia.
The setup is straightforward: a bizarre doorway crops up in the basement of a furniture store. Naturally, that’s never a good omen, but off we go.
Into the void: Plot and that divisive ending
The bulk of the film follows Clark – he was an architect, now running a furniture shop, and apparently not the happiest bloke around. He stumbles on this extradimensional labyrinth called the Backrooms and, rather than running away like any sane person, he dives in headfirst. Slowly but surely, the place gets in his head. By the time we reach the finale, Clark has vanished after spilling the beans to his therapist, Mary, about all the corridor-based weirdness.
Mary, being the only person who’ll actually follow up on this, tracks down the entrance and gets lost in the Backrooms herself. She eventually finds Clark, who’s properly round the bend at this point and decides to knock out Mary for good measure. She wakes up tied to a chair – classic – with Clark rambling about how he’s perfectly content to stay in this yellow-hued nightmare and introducing her to a collection of 'still lifes': human duplicates the Backrooms seems to cobble together out of previous victims.
There’s a bit of roleplay, as you do in extradimensional purgatory, with Clark forcing Mary to pretend to be his ex-wife. She tells him, in no uncertain terms, that the root of his misery is himself. Clark somewhat snaps out of it, frees her, and just as you think things can’t get any stranger, the real monster turns up. It’s an enormous, warped version of Clark dressed up as a pirate (earlier in the film, he sported this look in his shop – it’s one for the therapists, that detail).
Clark tries reasoning with his monstrous doppelgänger, but ends up dead for his trouble, leaving Mary legging it through endless corridors. Eventually, both she and the creature are gassed by a shadowy company called Async. Async used to make MRI machines but, because it's a horror film, stumbled into dimensional portals instead. Mary gets interrogated by Async’s Phil (played by Mark Duplass), who blanks her request to leave.
The film closes not with closure, but with a visually trippy montage of the endless Backrooms, finishing on a shot of a monstrous version of Mary now locked in some parallel interrogation room.
Why are fans arguing about the ending?
This isn’t your classic horror closer. There are no huge jump scares and any resolution is well hidden behind unsettling visuals and subtext. Clark spends most of the film spiralling over his own failings; Mary has her own share of trauma, having grown up with a reclusive mother and plagued by nightmares. The film flirts with the idea of the Backrooms as some sort of psychological metaphor, but, onscreen at least, it seems pretty physically real – odd creatures and all.
One group of viewers are sold on the artistic approach, reading Mary’s fate as symbolism: her copy is now stuck in a claustrophobic, inescapable loop, much like her own upbringing. Others, expecting a more traditional monster film, weren’t impressed by the finale’s more impressionistic leanings. And if you were hoping the main creature would get more screentime or explanation, hard luck.
Will there be more 'Backrooms'?
Considering how much curiosity the film’s stirred up—not to mention A24’s love of building franchises—it seems likely. Kane Parsons himself weighed in recently, telling USA Today:
"I still feel very adamant that it would need to be a television series. I don’t think you can finish 'Backrooms' as a narrative in a bunch of feature films, and I don’t even think it would be a good idea to do that many feature films. I think being specific is good."
Whether that shapes up as another film or the long-speculated TV series, Parsons seems to favour a more episodic approach.
- Director: Kane Parsons
- Writers: Will Soodik, Roberto Patino
- Producers: James Wan, Michael Clear (Atomic Monster)
- Cast highlights: Chiwetel Ejiofor (Clark), Renate Reinsve (Mary), Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lucite Maxwell, Avan Jogia
- Plot in a nutshell: Portal in a furniture shop leads to endless, mind-bending corridors, psychological breakdowns, monstrous doppelgängers, and a wrap-up that leaves everyone guessing