What Everyone Is Saying About the New Backrooms Movie

The internet has always been good at making normal things feel cursed. Empty offices. Yellow wallpaper. Buzzing lights. Hallways that look like they were designed by someone who hates sleep. That’s the whole power of the Backrooms. It takes a place that should be boring and turns it into something that feels wrong on a deep, animal level.

Now that Backrooms has made the jump from internet nightmare to A24 horror movie, the reaction has been exactly what you’d expect from a film born out of online folklore. Some people think it’s one of the creepiest theatrical horror experiences of the year. Some think it loses power when it tries to explain what should have stayed mysterious. Almost everyone agrees on one thing, though. Kane Parsons understood the feeling of the Backrooms better than most directors would have because this could have gone wrong very easily.

A Backrooms movie could’ve been nothing more than a feature-length creepypasta cash grab. It could’ve leaned too hard on monsters, lore dumps, and internet nostalgia. It doesn’t just ask, “What if you got trapped in a creepy endless office?” It asks why those spaces bother us in the first place.

The horror wasn’t just that something might be hiding around the corner. The horror was the corner itself. The hum of the lights. The emptiness. The feeling that you weren’t supposed to be there, and yet the place somehow knew you were coming.

The strongest praise around Backrooms keeps coming back to atmosphere, sound, production design, dread, and the way the camera makes the viewer feel trapped inside a place that refuses to behave like a normal building. That’s exactly where this movie needed to live.

The risk with any Backrooms adaptation is overbuilding the mythology. Internet horror often works because it feels half discovered. The audience fills in the gaps. Once a movie starts explaining the rules, the mystery can start shrinking. That seems to be the biggest divide among critics and viewers. People love the mood, but some are less sold when the film gives the Backrooms too much structure.

What critics are saying

Critics seem mostly impressed, especially with Kane Parsons’ control of tone. That’s no small thing since Parsons is coming from YouTube and stepping into a feature film backed by A24, James Wan, Shawn Levy, and other major producers. The conversation around the movie has focused heavily on how assured it feels for a debut.

The Guardian was especially enthusiastic, praising the movie as icy, disturbing, and visually inventive. Their review frames the movie less like a simple creepypasta adaptation and more like a horror story about architecture, memory, and modern spaces that make people feel small. That’s the kind of reading that helps explain why Backrooms is being discussed beyond normal horror fan circles.

Tom’s Guide also responded well to the film, comparing it to movies like The Blair Witch Project and The Cabin in the Woods. The praise there centered on the big-screen experience, the found-footage style, the performances, and the way the sound and visual design make the Backrooms feel immersive.

RogerEbert.com was more measured. The review acknowledged the twisted imagery and the film’s skill at showing someone else’s nightmare, but it also argued that the movie sometimes explains itself more than it should. That seems to be the cleanest version of the main criticism. Backrooms is creepy, but it may be at its best when it lets the viewer feel lost without handing them a map.

Rotten Tomatoes reaction

Early reporting placed the movie in positive territory, though not at the kind of runaway universal acclaim that turns a horror film into an instant sacred object. That actually sounds about right. Backrooms is not built like a four-quadrant crowd pleaser. It’s slow, weird, unsettling, and based on a concept that some people will find terrifying while others may find repetitive.

The positive critical response suggests that the movie clears the biggest hurdle. It proves that the Backrooms can function as a theatrical horror concept. It isn’t just a YouTube idea stretched too thin. It has enough mood, tension, and visual identity to survive on the big screen.

IMDb and general audience reaction

The IMDb conversation appears more mixed in the way audience reactions usually are for strange horror movies. Some viewers are praising the atmosphere and concept, while others seem less convinced by the story. You can check audience ratings and reviews on the film’s IMDb page.

Audience ratings for movies like this can swing hard because liminal horror is very taste dependent. It’s not just about being scared. It’s about being unsettled. Some viewers love that slow crawl of dread. Others want the movie to get to the point.

YouTube reviewers seem locked into the experience

YouTube reaction is especially important here because Backrooms comes from YouTube culture. This isn’t a random movie discovering online horror after the fact. This is a movie made by someone who helped define the modern Backrooms aesthetic through video.

That gives YouTube reviewers a different relationship to it. Many of them are not just judging the film as a movie. They’re judging whether it respects the thing that made the Backrooms popular in the first place.

From the review and reaction videos circulating, the response seems to be that the movie does capture the vibe. The sound design, camera work, and surreal spaces are getting the most attention. Viewers who already knew the Backrooms myth seem especially interested in how the movie expands the world without completely abandoning its original creepiness.

The biggest concern from that side is also familiar. Some fans don’t want too much lore. The Backrooms became scary because it felt like something you stumbled into by accident. The more official the rules become, the more that accidental terror can fade.

Letterboxd users are having fun with it

Letterboxd reaction seems very on brand for this kind of movie. Some viewers are writing sincere praise about dread, camera work, claustrophobia, and the endless nightmare feeling. Others are making jokes about IKEA, dissociation, Minecraft cave noises, and being trapped in corporate carpet hell. You can browse user reviews and ratings on Letterboxd.

Letterboxd also seems to reflect the split over story. Viewers are impressed by the concept and atmosphere, but some think the characters and narrative are weaker than the world itself. That might be the most honest audience read. Backrooms may be more powerful as a place than as a plot.

Social media is treating it like an event

The social media conversation around Backrooms has been bigger than a normal horror release because the movie already had a built-in mythology. People know the image. They know the yellow rooms. They know the idea of no-clipping out of reality. That means the movie arrived with a fanbase ready to judge every hallway, every sound, and every explanation.

There has also been chatter about Parsons himself, including rumors that the movie was “ghost directed” by more experienced producers. Mark Duplass pushed back on that, defending Parsons and making it clear that he was the one leading the film. That little controversy probably helped the movie more than hurt it because it reinforced the bigger story around Backrooms. This is a young internet filmmaker getting a real shot and apparently proving he belongs.

Box office reports are also adding fuel to the conversation. Backrooms opened huge for A24, with reports pointing to a massive opening day and a projected weekend that would shatter the studio’s previous records. That turns the movie from a horror curiosity into a genuine industry story.

The best thing about the reaction so far is that people are taking Backrooms seriously. Critics are talking about it as a real film. Fans are arguing over whether it protected the mystery. General audiences are showing up. Social media is treating it like a horror moment.

For a movie based on an internet legend about getting lost in a place nobody should ever find, that’s a pretty strong arrival.