Backrooms

The new horror movie Backrooms is about some of the creepiest places imaginable: the nondescript, beige-carpeted rooms that populate countless office spaces and discount furniture warehouses. The film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as the manager of a pirate-themed furniture store, who, as he discusses with his therapist (Renate Reinsve), discovers a secret labyrinth of backrooms – each with a strange and unsettling design. Directed by Kane Parsons, based on his “creepypasta”-inspired web series, the movie doesn’t have a plot so much as a deeply unnerving sense of place. If you’re looking for more moody horror, check out these episodes: In ‘Obsession,’ love hurts. It really, really, really hurts. https://www.npr.org/2026/05/15/nx-s1-5822305/in-obsession-love-hurts-it-really-really-really-hurts Adam Scott checks in to a haunted inn in ‘Hokum’ https://www.npr.org/2026/05/04/nx-s1-5806251/adam-scott-checks-in-to-a-haunted-inn-in-hokum Connect with Pop Culture Happy Hour: Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/ / Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pchh Our weekly newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/pop-culture Support Pop Culture Happy Hour+ https://plus.npr.org/happy See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Stephen Thompson?

  Back Rooms is a horror movie about some of the creepiest places imaginable. The nondescript beige carpeted rooms that populate countless office spaces and discount furniture warehouses. If you've ever worked in a rundown office park or shopped for a cheap mattress, the vibe will be instantly familiar. Dingy, claustrophobic, maybe with cheerful music piped through tinny speakers and always with the unsettling flickering hum of fluorescent lights. That setting forms the central concept of Back Rooms, which doesn't have a plot so much as a deeply unnerving sense of place. It's a surreal and unsettling bit of horror based on a popular YouTube series. I'm Stephen Thompson.

• 1:11Stephen Thompson?

  Today, we are talking about Back Rooms on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 1:48Speaker 03

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• 2:36Stephen Thompson?

  Joining me today is Jordan Cruciola. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Seen on Maximum Fun. Hey, Jordan.

• 2:43Speaker 06

  Hello. Thank you so much for having me back.

• 2:45Stephen Thompson?

  It is a pleasure. Also with us is freelance music and culture journalist, Rihanna Cruz. Hey, Rihanna.

• 2:50Speaker 06

  Hey, Stephen. Happy to be here.

• 2:52Stephen Thompson?

  Great to have you. So in Backrooms, Chouetel Edgiafor plays the manager of a pirate-themed discount furniture store called Captain Clark's Ottoman Empire. As he discusses with his therapist, played by Renata Reinzwe, his life is falling apart. He's getting a divorce, he drinks too much, and he's carrying around the massive weight of ambient stress. And to make matters worse, while living in the store, he discovers a secret labyrinth of backrooms. Each has a strange and unsettling design. Tiny doors with three knobs, narrow passageways, piles of strangely familiar laundry, masses of junky furniture stacked ominously. The disorienting effect of backrooms is magnified through the film's use of found

• 3:37Stephen Thompson?

  footage as we view some of the rooms via fuzzy images shot on vintage camcorders. Backrooms' origin is what's known as a creepypasta. For those who don't know, that's a catch-all phrase used to describe pieces of horror folklore that spread on the internet. Kane Parsons made a popular Backrooms web series for YouTube when he was a teenager. This is his debut feature. He's only 20. Backrooms is in theaters now. Rihanna Cruz, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of Backrooms?

• 4:05Speaker 06

  I think I like it more the more I think about it, to be honest. There's a bunch of things going for it. You know, it's technically stunning. The production design, I find incredible. The choices that Kane Parsons is making are As a director, feel very beyond his years, you know, they feel super seasoned. And I think the best parts of the movie are when it commits to this analog aesthetic and the vintage horror style that you find in the YouTube series. I don't necessarily think it functions the best it could outside of YouTube. To be honest, but I think that's intentional, right? Like, I don't really find Backrooms, the movie scary.

• 4:49Speaker 06

  And I don't think it really functions well as a horror movie. But as like a conceptual project with weird disarming elements and lots to say about the nature of memory and the reproduction of thought. I found that fascinating. And I like generally how it feels in direct opposition to the class of tell, don't show horror movies that we're in right now, especially like YouTube or horror movies, you know, thinking of obsession, thinking of Shelby Oaks, things like that. It's refreshing to watch something that feels new and exciting.

• 5:29Speaker 06

  And doesn't feel like I'm being spoon fed horror, you know?

• 5:35Stephen Thompson?

  Sure.

• 5:35Speaker 06

  And I love that.

• 5:36Stephen Thompson?

  This movie is very light on lore. And and very heavy on just showing you things that will creep you out.

• 5:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I really, really dig that. And I think like, I love a horror movie that makes you sit and think about why you're uncomfortable. The things that were the least successful for me in Backrooms were, you know, the overtly horror elements. I I think the unsettling vibe was really compelling to me. And I enjoyed that overall.

• 6:07Stephen Thompson?

  Okay, how about you, Jordan?

• 6:09Speaker 05

  I really liked this. Like, I like anything. I'll watch anything. I'm a straightforward person, kind of first and foremost. I don't necessarily need to be like, no one told me anything and I had an amazing time. I liked that I was just like existing in this place. Like, it worked for me a lot better than I think a movie like this typically would. As my my wife and I discussed on the way out, like, it like the cell. Different, but really captured that feeling of of being in a nightmare. The illogical nature of it, the endless nature of it, the imprisoning nature of that in a world that only can be conjured by your dreams because real tangible life could not accommodate such strangeness. It really, really does that.

• 6:53Speaker 05

  An excellent use of period piece. This being set in the nineties and the it made a surreality of true things about the nineties that made the sense of place feel like a character too. Like that furniture store can still exist somewhere, but it really existed then, which means you could have ended up in any manner of iterations of it. And kind of the the sterility of place and everything around you and like the quietness of it is such a great contrast for the raw emotional performance that she would tell Edgifor is always going to bring you. He is such a raw emotional performer. And I thought him set against the all of his surroundings and environments was a really

• 7:34Speaker 05

  great contrast and also a great comparison to the Scandinavian stoicism of Renata Reinsva. Well chosen, select cast as they went further and further into this place. We've heard about how like they really practically designed this gargantuan location that people were actually kind of getting lost in on set.

• 7:51Stephen Thompson?

  Oh, gosh, I can only imagine.

• 7:53Speaker 05

  I'm so happy they dove into the whole world. They built it. They let this kid see it through as a feature and it just feels unlikely in so many ways. And I'm super excited that it exists. Would highly recommend.

• 8:06Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah, I mean, I agree with most of what both of you are saying. I definitely want to shout out superior production design. This is a really, really well built set.

• 8:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:18Stephen Thompson?

  That gives you just this sense of kind of Kafkaesque horror. But also it's tapping into several different deeply unsettling things about society, which is what the best horror stuff does, right? Like you're you're taking something mundane and making it terrifying. And what is more mundane than these beige fluorescent lit that like?

• 8:41Stephen Thompson?

  Piped in cheer, the voice that is like welcoming you in a bunch of different languages. It's supposed to be pulling you in, but it's absolutely pushing you away. Like, those effects, I think, were so smartly leveraged here. And I am surprised we have gone this far into this film when we're talking about what this film is commenting on without mentioning AI.

• 9:04Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 9:05Stephen Thompson?

  Because this film, I mean, it's set in the early 90s. Not only is it pre-AI, it is pre-internet, it's pre-cell phones.

• 9:13Speaker 06

  Interesting, yeah.

• 9:14Stephen Thompson?

  Rihanna, you referred to the kind of dream logic that is going on in a lot of these rooms. But there is also this uncanny valley of AI imagery and how creepy and unsettling it can be when you see a figure that is supposed to look like a human, but it has too many fingers.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  The denizens of the back rooms are definitely like early gen'd up AI creations. Is that nine fingers? Like?

• 9:39Stephen Thompson?

  Absolutely, and it's done in a surprisingly subtle way. It's not underlining that for you in any way, shape or form, but you are sitting there like, why am I having the same creeped out, unnerved feeling that I get when I look at bad AI?

• 9:55Speaker 06

  Totally.

• 9:55Stephen Thompson?

  And I think it's really using that in such strong ways. No matter how much it's intending to be commenting on it, it is, to me, unmistakable. I will say, I yearned for a smaller screen. First of all, it is very interior.

• 10:10Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 10:10Stephen Thompson?

  And I think the smaller a screen you watch it on it, the more interior it will feel and the more unsettling it will feel.

• 10:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, I agree with you, Stephen.

• 10:18Stephen Thompson?

  I am also a person who gets motion sickness from shaky cam. I almost had to walk out of Blair Witch Project all the many years ago when I saw it in theaters like everybody else. Not because it was too scary, but because I wanted to vomit.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was the, that was the hidden headline when people were like, people are walking out of Blair Witch Project and throwing up. It's like, it's because they're sick.

• 10:40Stephen Thompson?

  Right.

• 10:41Speaker 05

  It wasn't because they were so scared. They were scared, but it was because they were motion sick.

• 10:44Stephen Thompson?

  Right, and this film does, if you are somebody who is very sensitive to that, it's worth being warned that it has a bunch of shaky cam stuff. It opens with enough shaky cam stuff where I was, I was fully sitting there thinking, can I gut this entire movie out?

• 10:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:58Stephen Thompson?

  Or am I going to have to go get a popcorn bucket? And so.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  Am I gonna have to go get a giant deer Spielberg Disclosure Day popcorn bucket right now? Am I?

• 11:08Stephen Thompson?

  To hold my back rooms vomit.

• 11:13Stephen Thompson?

  So, you know, that's a me thing. I think that's not most people. But I did find, like, as I was thinking about it, I'm like, man, I think this would be really even maybe even more powerful. Like on headphones watching on a laptop.

• 11:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, I agree with you, Stephen. I'm not sure if this works not on YouTube, to be honest, because that's the creepypasta element of it all. You know, like, part of what makes the backroom scary is that you feel like you're like stumbling upon something that is real. It's out there, you know, you're not supposed to see this. And when you frame a narrative around it, as somebody that watched the original Backrooms clips on YouTube, like, when you frame a narrative around the vibe of analog horror, I think a lot of the power of the images are lost. You know, you lose that kind of uncanny valley feeling because, you know, it's blown up and there's clearly a budget.

• 12:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:11Speaker 06

  And I don't know, it loses a little bit in that regard. And my least favorite parts of the movie were when it feels like a traditional movie, you know, where you have a plot, you have a narrative, you have these characters. The best parts of the film are when it shies away from this and you get the, I wish there was more analog horror stuff. But I also say this as somebody that liked the movie Skinamarink a lot, which exists.

• 12:38Speaker 05

  You're a liminal space horror person, a liminal person.

• 12:42Speaker 06

  I really liked that movie and I do think there's similarities between like the quiet analog liminality of that film and Backrooms. And I just wish it leaned into that a little bit more. Everything with Renata, the therapist character, I was kind of tapped out for. I did not like her casting. I thought it was out of place. Yeah, and I think maybe it was just I was wanting more of that sit back, let it wash over you feeling. And I think her character serves a lot to explain how we should be feeling. And I didn't enjoy that as much as I could have.

• 13:24Stephen Thompson?

  I think occasionally taking the film out of those backrooms and into the real world.

• 13:32Stephen Thompson?

  Helped situate how unsettling those worlds were. I certainly appreciated having a little bit of solid ground to stand on every once in a while. I also just, I'm a Renata Reinsva stan.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  The queen of can, Renata Reinsva?

• 13:47Stephen Thompson?

  I just love Renata Reinsva in everything I see her in. And so anytime she turns up in anything, I'm like, oh, boy. So I don't necessarily, I'm not sure I'm capable of thinking she's miscast.

• 13:58Speaker 05

  Well, I wonder if, because like what you're saying, if like, the message kind of is the medium with this for you? Like, I wonder, for the big screen, does the concept, like, as you experienced on YouTube, like, do we, like, literally need these inserted moments of grounded reality for that big screen, for that 4K experience that is going to be in the theater? Does the lo-fi analog, over the course of like a theatrical runtime, do you start losing people? Is it like, I'm in a theater, just kind of wandering, like, do you need that glossy thing for people in theaters to be like, yeah, I'm watching a movie, as opposed to like, this is a thing I could be watching on YouTube that like sets it apart? Like, does it become a functional thing, do we think, as opposed to even like, like a horror necessity?

• 14:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's mostly functional, but I do think there's even still a juxtaposition between the analog horror sections of the movie, where it's very lo-fi, shaky cam, as you mentioned, and the like, really stark 4K, better lit.

• 15:00Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 15:01Speaker 06

  And I just think whatever's happening outside the back rooms, I didn't really need. I don't need like, the therapy narrative to couch what is happening, you know? I don't need the trauma-informed theme. I don't know. And maybe that's my personal taste.

• 15:16Stephen Thompson?

  It does spend a fair bit of time kind of hinting at more of a backstory for the Renata Reinsva character than it really pays off. I kind of expected a little bit more ends to get tied together, or a little bit more to be explained. It kind of hints that she has a traumatic childhood that may be informing her perception of what's going on. And I don't know that that fully coheres, but I'm also not sure that full coherence is the point of a film like this.

• 15:45Speaker 06

  Right. I don't think it's supposed to like tell you how to feel and I enjoy that.

• 15:50Speaker 05

  I was really, I was reading Amy Nicholson's review of this for LA Times and she got it. She made a point that I thought was just so interesting, which is kid is so young, like, and I say kid, it sounds pejorative. I'm 40 and they're all children.

• 16:03Stephen Thompson?

  These kids today with that creepypasta.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  And that creepypasta, like I'm not the oldest person in the world, but God 20 seems so young when you're twice that age. But Amy pointed out that Kane Parsons is the same age as YouTube's first videos, like his whole life, like beginning to current, he is fully pickled. He is brined in this maelstrom of digital material and processing and interface. And, and to your point, Stephen, with the mention of AI, that inevitably comes like part of the brine that we're all stewing in for someone like Kane Parsons. He's never been in another soup. He's, this is what he's been in the whole time. So like, I was fascinated to watch it and think about like, man, the things your imagination is molded

• 16:49Speaker 05

  in and the, the caverns that it goes to has been exclusively defined by this thing where I have like an adolescence under my feet before it started to become something I really interfaced with. You know, creative people are everywhere, but like for me personally, it was like, I do think there is a way that this person's mind and, and his contemporaries, his cohort will be wired that actually my brain doesn't make this particular kind of creativity. It's like, it's like having a brain that can be a creepypasta generator as opposed to like figuring out how, what a creepypasta is along the way and getting into it.

• 17:23Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 05

  To watch this and the way that some of those images are really, they are really resonant in comparing like how like AI images looked, especially when we were starting to get those really generated videos. I was like, wow, this is like, I'm, we are watching a creative mind of purely digital conception. I don't know what the guy's universal media diet is like, but like, he clearly like platformed himself on YouTube, started making stuff there. I was like dang like that feels like a true like we have hit a true generational divide between the creators that create came before and the ones that came after where it can now be pure digital native and as much as that term gets thrown around and we're all used to all these platforms etc etc we are entering the realm of the ones who are utterly raised within the

• 18:09Speaker 05

  vacuum of that kind of medium and I was like wow that is wild to me and it made it made the movie I think feel even more intense when I was watching it I was like what if this is what Gen Alpha is just dealing with is this what they're like all the time is this what they're thinking like that kind of made it scarier for me personally

• 18:27Stephen Thompson?

  I mean I think that's a really really really excellent and important point and it's you know something that that I've certainly thought about I've watched a lot of like teen coming of age movies that are supposed to be set in the present day but are clearly through a Gen X lens the number of coming of age stories that are like kids on bikes in a small town that like that's very much my experience growing up I grew up in a small town I was a kid on a bike but like the experience of how the internet and how YouTube and how the nature of kind of internet folklore that you can get steeped in all of these things were completely alien to my childhood and to see

• 19:07Stephen Thompson?

  how that is going to affect art going forward we we talk all the time about how negative it can be and how how terrifying things like AI are to any kind of creative enterprise but this film hints at a way that it could be deployed in extremely thoughtful and intriguing ways

• 19:28Speaker 05

  well like you were saying it didn't quite feel right outside of its native environs of YouTube like that's how true it is to the platform that I'm sure largely helped conceive like that this was even possible like that's sort of how of its medium it feels

• 19:43Speaker 06

  as somebody who is younger and whose childhood was fully formed on the internet right like my sense of what art is and what is scary was motivated by me stumbling on random YouTube videos when I was like 10 years old and being like Oh my god, like, I can't, I shouldn't be looking at this, you know? Like, that's why I, I feel like the movie, to me, could have existed without maybe kowtowing to The old The studio demands. The movie is strongest to me when it leans into its origins and what makes it good and what makes it freaky. That's why I see it with these added, you know, narrative structures as less of a horror

• 20:28Speaker 06

  and more of like a drama with freaky elements. I, I think it's a really smart movie. You know, like, I walked out of there and I was like, did Kane Parsons read, like, Hito Styrl theory? Like, I, I was like, he's really tapped into, like, what it means to refract an image, refract a memory, you know? What does it mean when something is broken down to its bare bone parts and then built back together? And I thought that was really, really intelligent. And I just wish that maybe he trusted the audience just a sliver more to get there without adding what I felt was like an unnecessary kind of umbrella structure.

• 21:07Speaker 05

  Like, yes to this. Yes to a new talent that hasn't proven themselves conventionally necessary, because even Currie Barker has been making like longer form things that are more akin to conventional television or movie experience as a creator on YouTube up to this point. And Kane Parsons is so young, this is mostly the thing that he has done. And it, there's not really evidence to be like, he can shoulder the budget and the resources and all this. And there's, I've been getting so hung up lately seeing these younger creators get the chance of these walls that seem arbitrary placed up before directors, where you have to like put your 10 years in. So directors, filmmakers end up in this limbo where like, they need to make the thing and people keep telling them they need to have the thing made, but no one will give the resources to do it. And yes, give 20-year-olds the chance to like put this out, and especially in horror,

• 21:52Speaker 05

  where the horror people, they don't need to turn out for Chiu Te Le Givor, Renata Reinswa, they will turn out because you said horror. So at the very least, you're going to get some people through that door. Hand the young filmmakers these opportunities who've been working in mediums, you probably don't understand enough to translate the totality of their vision onto the big screen and you need to have them make big screen compromises? Well, let them do it and let's see what happens. And I'm really glad we got to see what happens with Backrooms.

• 22:15Stephen Thompson?

  Absolutely. Love it. All right. That brings us to the end of our show. Rhianna Cruz, Jordan Cruciola, thanks so much for being here.

• 22:23Speaker 06

  Thanks, Stephen, for having us.

• 22:24Speaker 05

  The spring walk up to the corner box office has been so strong. This is all so exciting.

• 22:31Stephen Thompson?

  This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katzif and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.

• 22:48Stephen Thompson?

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This week on Up First, we're in the final days before the midterm elections. And this is one of the wonderful things about politics, one of the wonderful things about humanity. We have all this data, we have all this information, and nobody really knows what's gonna happen. We're gonna follow it day by day through Election Day and beyond. And you can listen to Up First every morning on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. American journalist Austin Teis vanished in Syria over a decade ago. For years, we've been searching for him, and now we finally have some answers. This is the prison that Austin was in. Oh, my God. We found Austin's file.

• 23:33Stephen Thompson?

  Listen to Where Is Austin Teis from NPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4, on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.