“Backrooms” brings an Oshkosh, Wisconsin, internet legend to the big screen in a tense, stylish horror film from 20-year-old director Kane Parsons.
The A24 release blends found-footage unease, psychological horror and breakout box-office power into one of the year’s biggest genre surprises.
‘Backrooms’ review: A tense mix of found-footage and psychological horror
“Backrooms” plays like “The Blair Witch Project” filtered through “American Horror Story” and “The Shining.”
Parsons knows the most effective horror comes from atmosphere, not jump scares. He builds dread through silence, repetition and the sense that the walls may never end.
Fluorescent lights buzz overhead. Yellow walls close in. Corridors stretch without logic. The effect is claustrophobic and deeply unnerving.
The result is a modern horror film that understands internet folklore but works just as well for viewers who have never heard of the Backrooms.
What ‘The Backrooms’ movie is about
The film follows a therapist who enters a realm beyond reality after a patient disappears, only to find a maze of empty rooms, dead ends and unseen threats.
The setup is simple, and that works in the film’s favor. Every hallway feels wrong, and every turn suggests something waiting just out of view.
Strong sound design and disorienting camerawork do much of the heavy lifting, pulling the movie away from standard plot beats and toward pure immersion.
Parsons has said the deeper idea is psychological: Backrooms reflect memory gone wrong, the destructive patterns people get stuck in and the anxiety of living inside systems that can feel like a box closing in around you.
‘Backrooms’ origin: Why Oshkosh, Wisconsin, matters
The film carries an extra hook for Wisconsin audiences because the Backrooms phenomenon traces back to Oshkosh.
The original image behind the mythos came from a photograph taken inside the Oshkosh HobbyTown space in 2003. The store, on Oregon Street, has since turned those back rooms into a race track for radio-controlled cars.
But the image’s yellow walls, fluorescent lights and unsettling emptiness helped inspire one of the internet’s best-known “creepypastas” — online horror stories and urban legends that spread from user to user.
As the image spread online, it became the seed for the Backrooms lore: the idea that someone could slip out of reality and into an endless maze of buzzing, empty rooms.
Parsons taps into that plain, off-kilter fear and turns a Wisconsin-rooted internet oddity into effective big-screen horror.
Kane Parsons’ directorial debut arrives at age 20
The movie stands out even more because it is the feature directorial debut of Kane Parsons, who is 20.
Parsons first drew attention as a teenager with viral Backrooms videos on YouTube as Kane Pixels, where he turned internet folklore into effective found-footage horror.
A24 handed him the same material on a larger canvas, and the gamble paid off.
This debut feels less like a first step than the arrival of a filmmaker with a clear command of mood, pacing and visual dread.
‘Backrooms’ box office: First-week numbers broke records
“Backrooms” did more than generate buzz. It broke out.
In its first week, the film opened to about $81.5 million domestically and $118 million worldwide, giving A24 its biggest opening ever. It more than tripled the studio’s previous mark set by “Civil War,” which opened with $25.7 million in 2024. It also set a new benchmark for an original horror film.
Among horror openings, it trailed only “It” at $123 million, “It: Chapter Two” at $91 million and “The Conjuring: Last Rites” at $84 million, while edging past “Five Nights at Freddy’s” at $80 million. The debut also delivered the biggest R-rated opening of 2026 and made Parsons the youngest director ever to open a No. 1 film.
Those numbers crushed early projections and turned the release into one of the year’s biggest box-office surprises.
For a roughly $10 million production from a first-time feature director, the result was extraordinary.
The opening also showed that liminal horror and digital-native storytelling can draw a large theatrical audience.
Review verdict: ‘Backrooms’ is worth the trip, especially for Wisconsinites
“Backrooms” is likely one of the year’s strongest horror releases, turning viral lore into something cinematic, unnerving and assured.
Fans of psychological horror, found-footage movies and surreal haunted-space stories should find plenty to like.
If “The Blair Witch Project,” “American Horror Story” and “The Shining” opened the same wrong door, the result might look like this.
For horror fans, and especially for readers intrigued by the Oshkosh origin behind the legend, “Backrooms” is worth seeing.
Contact Brandon Reid at breid@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Oshkosh Northwestern: ‘Backrooms’ brings Oshkosh liminal horror to film
Reporting by Brandon Reid, Oshkosh Northwestern / Oshkosh Northwestern
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