A24’s Backrooms is set to hit theaters Friday, bringing Kane Parsons’ internet-born horror idea to the big screen after a run of online chatter about who was really steering the film. On Tuesday, Mark Duplass pushed back against those rumors on X, saying Parsons was fully in charge when he was on set and adding that the 20-year-old filmmaker was more in control than many directors three times his age.
The timing matters because Backrooms is entering theaters with momentum. As of Wednesday, it held an 87 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and was tracking for a $45 million to $50 million opening weekend, a strong start for a film built from a YouTube series Parsons launched as a teenager. The movie stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell, with Will Soodik writing the script and James Wan and Osgood Perkins among the producers.
Backrooms follows therapist Dr. Mary Kline, played by Reinsve, after her patient disappears inside an alternate dimension and she goes in after him. That premise gives the film a clean horror hook, but the early response has been mixed on what happens after the setup. The film is part of a busy stretch for horror releases in May, alongside other titles such as Obsession, and the reviews cited so far have split between praise for the atmosphere and skepticism about the structure.
That divide is already shaping how Backrooms is being discussed. The Daily Beast’s Nick Schager described it as Parsons’ debut feature and said it had a May 29 release date, while Jeremy Jahns said the movie was “shockingly funny” at times and that audiences were laughing. He also said the last act felt like an afterthought. The ’ Jake Coyle took a different view of the film’s strengths, writing that the backstory was more intriguing than the movie itself, and Angie Han said the eerie logic starts to fray the longer the film stays in the Backrooms.
Those reactions point to the same tension at the center of the release: Backrooms arrives with real curiosity, a recognizable cast and the kind of online origin story that can pull in viewers who already know the material. But the challenge for Parsons, who built the project from a viral YouTube series he started as a teenager, is whether a feature film can do more than stretch a memorable premise. Friday will answer that in theaters, where the box office and audience reaction will say more than the rumors ever did.
