Quartile rating: 7/10 · 2 ratings
A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.
Backrooms adapts the creepypasta/web-series lore into a feature-length found footage horror, leaning into liminal space aesthetics and analog horror influences. The premise is intriguing and the cinematography captures the unsettling emptiness of the liminal spaces reasonably well, with the foreboding atmosphere being a genuine strength. However, the plot struggles to sustain momentum beyond its compelling setup, and the acting is inconsistent, with some performances feeling underdeveloped. The ending fails to fully capitalize on the psychological and surrealist threads established earlier, leaving the narrative feeling unresolved in an unsatisfying rather than deliberately ambiguous way. Novelty is solid — the liminal horror aesthetic is distinctive enough and the analog horror influences give it a particular flavor — but it doesn't transcend its web-series origins sufficiently to feel wholly original.