One of the most talked-about weekends of the summer can be credited to Backrooms, a horror film crafted by the renowned indie powerhouse A24 and directed by the remarkably talented 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons. This film draws inspiration from a series of online shorts also helmed by Parsons, which themselves are based on a “creepypasta” concept. These internet-spread horror stories and imagery delve into the eerie notion of spaces existing in parallel dimensions. They mimic the forms and structures of our reality but appear as warped, dreamlike versions. Imagine dreaming about your grandparent’s house, yet it looks nothing like it should, or stumbling upon an unexpected room in a familiar place. That’s the essence captured in this chilling movie.
For Parsons, crafting this narrative poses significant storytelling challenges, even with a distinguished cast that includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, and indie-horror favorite Mark Duplass. Drawing on themes from his YouTube series, he introduces elements like Async, a company researching the Backrooms. Nonetheless, he strives to ground the narrative in relatable human experiences, focusing on characters who inadvertently discover and become trapped in this eerie realm. The film’s portrayal of the Backrooms, combined with dreamlike sequences, often blurs the line between reality and illusion, especially as the story reaches its haunting conclusion. Let’s delve deeper into these enigmatic yellow rooms in full spoiler mode, seeking clarity.
Backrooms Plot Summary:
The film’s storyline unfolds simply: In 1990, Clark (Ejiofor) is a despondent furniture-store owner grappling with personal and professional failures—a failed marriage, an unfulfilled architecture career, and a barely surviving store where he now lives, hinting at his impending dreamlike journey. While examining an electrical issue in the store’s cavernous depths, he stumbles upon a wall that transports him into a seemingly infinite series of drab, yellow-hued spaces. He manages to return to reality and convinces two employees to help him explore this new world. However, their exploration turns dangerous when they’re attacked, leading to a time jump in the narrative.
After Clark leaves a cryptic message on her answering machine, his therapist Mary (Reinsve) ventures to the store in search of him. She, too, enters the Backrooms, where she encounters a mysterious figure, ultimately revealed to be Clark. He subdues her, and when she regains consciousness, she finds herself tied to a chair. Clark, visibly disturbed, discusses the strange world, surrounded by grotesque human-like copies. After a session of talk therapy and role play, Clark releases Mary, only to be attacked by his own Backrooms doppelgänger. This creature seemingly kills Clark and then chases Mary through the surreal landscape.
Backrooms Ending Explained: Where Is Mary and Does She Escape the Backrooms?
Mary narrowly escapes the monstrous version of Clark, only to be apprehended by hazmat-suit-clad figures. Initially, it’s unclear whether these are real people or highly organized Backrooms replicas. However, she soon finds herself in an interrogation room with Phil (Duplass), a scientist who has appeared sporadically throughout the film. He reveals that his company, Async, once manufactured MRI machines but shifted focus to explore and chart this mysterious new domain following their discovery of the Backrooms.
Phil presses Mary with questions about what she’s seen there; she presses him about where she is, and what will be done with her. Neither side seems willing (or able?) to offer all of the information the other wants; Phil’s promises are vague and Mary seems to withhold at least a little of what she’s seen. She notes that it’s like trying to describe a dog to someone who’s never seen a dog, and then asking that person to draw it. The movie then cuts to other images from the Backrooms — including a mutated copy of Mary, sitting at what looks like an imitation of the room where she sits opposite Phil. Parsons cuts to black on this image; no mid-credits or post-credits scenes further clarify, though he has said that of course he would like to make a series of sequels.
So what’s going on here, exactly? The most literal reading of the scene is that Mary has been rescued from the Backrooms, but is now being held indefinitely in some other, undisclosed location where Async conducts its research. Her assumption seems to be that it’s outside of the Backrooms. But is it? Take note of a subtle shift in Phil’s language. He at first seems to refer to the Backrooms as something to the effect of “this place,” vaguely implying that they’re in a facility within the Backrooms. Mary, however, refers to the Backrooms as a place she was in, not one she is currently occupying — and Phil seems to take his cues from her, referring to it as a separate space from that point forward. But the interrogation room is so eerily bland, and stylistically similar in its minimalism, to a Backrooms space that it’s difficult to tell. There’s a strip of blue sky visible through some high, relatively narrow windows on the room’s wall, yet it’s so placid and unchanging that it looks a little phony.
The cut to Mary’s copy, in a Backrooms version of the room and table where we see her sitting, might be taken as a sign that she has, in fact, escaped the space, even if she’s now trapped by different forces in another, less supernatural florescent-lit hell. Also, she seems mildly agitated but not disoriented, the way she might be from an extended journey without realizing what was happening. But then again, the Backrooms are nothing if not infinite copies of copies; without a surer sign of the outside world, it’s hard to be sure that Mary has returned to that realm.
Of course, whether or not Mary remains trapped in the actual Backrooms may be immaterial. After all, assuming Phil is real (and the Backrooms mutations don’t seem capable of so closely imitating real people), she is probably out of immediate danger while also not allowed to return to her own world. This may be part of Parsons’ aim: Highlighting how these Backrooms-style spaces can be recreated in the real world, and how the liminal, supernatural weirdness of the Backrooms feeds off of the similarly uncanny spaces we leave abandoned, empty, or otherwise serving as a real-world void.
If it’s a little tricky to land on that interpretation, though, and easy enough to read this scene as yet another Backrooms-set scene, it’s because sometimes Backrooms seems a little more focused on the ambitious gameplay of its central conceit more than the psychology of its characters. Why would Async find value in holding Mary indefinitely? Why would Mary, in turn, withhold information about what little strange sights she saw in there, which seem consistent with what Async would have seen in their own research? What’s the actual central conflict that’s supposed to be coming to a head in that scene?
Some of this might be described as ambiguity, but given Parsons’ stated desire to make more Backrooms movies, it also feels like modern franchise-teasing. There’s an eerie, unsettled quality to the movie; there also seems to be a hope that the thematically appropriate ambiguities of the movie’s ending will give way to yet another larger universe.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. In addition to contributing at Decider, his work also appears regularly at The A.V. Club, The Guardian, and GQ, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.