For some time, liminal horror has thrived online. Countless YouTube channels have produced incredible videos that explore uncanny spaces via an analogue approach. Directed by Kane Parsons, a pioneer of the genre, Backrooms is the launch of liminal horror in the mainstream. While a few elements are underbaked, the product as a whole is an incredibly engaging display of psychogeographical dread.

A furniture owner and his therapist find themselves in an extra-dimensional location, filled with winding halls and uncanny architecture. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve are our lead performers. They are joined by Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Mark Duplass.

Backrooms succeeds in the most important ways. It transfers a YouTube series (which Kane Parsons created too) to the big screen with its core DNA still intact. The oppressive environments explored in the film are both uneasy and familiar. This dichotomy provides the basis for the liminal horror being explored. Each room in the “Backrooms” has a nightmarish quality, yet there is an undercurrent of nostalgia along every surface. It is here that the movie is at its best, in the moments where we exist in a space that feels welcoming, despite the threat of an unseen evil.

The film leaves you wanting more from the scenes within the surrealist spaces. This is a good problem to have, but some additional sequences that quietly build tension would have been welcome. The central story and characters are where some negatives arise, even if these elements will have little impact on most viewers’ enjoyment of the film.

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve offer decent characters that undergo a journey of psychological evolution. The paths they take have all the pieces for successful character arcs, but their destinations fall short of the script’s goals. Ejiofor, in particular, reaches a place which makes sense but is unearned. A final element to discuss is that the film suffers a common hurdle in horror, in which the narrative becomes far less scary once you give us a view of the monster. These issues may sound large, but feel negligible in the grand scheme of the picture.

Backrooms is remarkable if only for the fact that it was directed by a 21-year-old. Kane Parsons has elegantly directed a full-length adaptation of his YouTube series in a manner that successfully displays a genre of horror that will undoubtedly become more and more popular in the coming years. This will hopefully be the first feature of many for a young filmmaker with a great cinematic career still ahead of him.