Warning: Major spoilers for ‘Backrooms’ aheadAs a long-time explorer of the internet lore surrounding the creepypasta known as The Backrooms, the notion that A24’s feature-length exploration of the core concept would delve deeper into some of the most fascinating parts of the mysterious space was exciting. The true nature of the Backrooms (or the Complex, depending on which corner of the expansive lore you’re discussing) doesn’t actually exist, as there have been so many well-developed spins on the original 4chan post that there is no singular “correct” version. By and large, YouTube creator Kane Parsons’ series of found footage videos exploring the Backrooms is the most well-known and well-developed version of the concept.
Parsons, or “Kane Pixels” to the initiated, developed A24’s Backrooms almost as a companion piece to his massively popular YouTube series. I’ve watched Parsons’ Backrooms series several times, and certainly consider it to be the definitive version of what the Backrooms actually are. Naturally, I expected to get more answers about the terrifying space than what Parsons provided in his YouTube series with the movie, but I was wildly incorrect. Backrooms posed far more questions than it provided answers, which I will opine is exactly how the unknowable Backrooms should be treated. This list is comprised of the most consequential mysteries remaining at the end of the movie, each of which may be hinted at, but never once truly solved.
Why You Should Trust Me: Horror is my bread-and-butter at MovieWeb, and has been my comfort zone for movies, TV, and books for more than 20 years. I specialize in separating the themes from the screams, and am a firm believer that horror provides one of the most ideal canvases on which to create art that helps both the creators and the audience process the trauma and terror in their own lives. The original Backrooms intrigued me for just that reason, and it’s why I have immersed myself so deeply in the lore.
10
Where Are the Backrooms, Really?
There are no clues as to how they came into physical existence.
This is the mystery at the heart of the entire movie, and of the concept of the Backrooms in general. The original 4chan post indicates that a person needs to “no-clip” out of reality to access them, and Parsons has always run with that concept. Are they then an alternate reality, with only echoes of our world in common? Do they represent another dimension entirely, full of its own infinite space and creatures just as ours does? Backrooms never even scratches the surface of the Backrooms’ true origin, only truly implying that they’re a labyrinth of distorted memories from our world, manifested into physical form.
9
Do the Backrooms Change for Each Person Who Enters Them?
The part we see appears heavily influenced by Clark’s memories.
The very minimal section of the Backrooms that we see in the movie is heavily influenced by Clark’s memories, complete with echoes of his furniture store and even a warped copy of his TV-commercial-costumed self. Dr. Mary Kline is able to enter at the same point as Clark, and experiences the horrors of his section, but the movie also shows the various copies of her childhood home, in which she was essentially trapped as a young girl with a mentally ill mother. In the expanded lore, the layout of the Backrooms can change based on the person, and Mary’s flight from “Captain Clark” is completely different from what Clark, Kat, and Bobby experience as they run away. Backrooms provides zero clarity on if Mary’s version is actually the same as what Clark experienced.
8
Where Do the Doors Come From?
The passageway between Clark’s store and the Backrooms seems randomly placed.
Clark stumbles upon the entrance to the Backrooms entirely by accident, as he happened to catch just the right angle to see the yellow gleam of the florescent lights through the wall of the basement of his store. The movie provides no explanation for why the door appeared there, how long it had been there, or why it appeared at all in the first place. Thinking more philosophically, Clark being forced to sleep in the beds of his furniture store may have acted as a breaking point, opening the door to the area of the Backrooms that is shaped by his own distorted memories.
7
Are the Backrooms Bleeding Into the Real World?
A suspicious circuit breaker points to a disconcerting possibility.
Before Clark ever enters the Backrooms, he experiences power issues in his store, with surges, unexplained flickering, and sky-high power bills pointing to a severe electrical problem. The electrician he calls investigates the circuit box in the store basement, and points out a confusingly-placed circuit that seems stuck into the box entirely at random. While it doesn’t appear connected to anything initially, it later works when Clark tries turning the power on and off. Its peculiar placement hints that it may in fact be a misremembered element of reality, and is in fact a product of the Backrooms itself. The implication is that the Backrooms have started to impact the real world, but Parsons never goes any deeper into that possibility.
6
Why Are More Doors to the Backrooms Appearing?
Async researcher Phil mentions Clark’s door opening is part of a trend.
During Mary’s interrogation at the end of Backrooms, Async researcher Phil notes to Mary that more and more doors like the one that appeared in Clark’s store basement have been appearing, and Async has no idea why. That’s a consistency from Parsons’ found footage YouTube series, which sees multiple individuals essentially fall into the Backrooms at different points in time and space. Phil provides no more information than that, and in fact uses that as an argument for why Mary is being held and questioned. They don’t know the answer, but they certainly seem deeply concerned.
5
How Much Does Async Really Know About the Backrooms?
Mary stumbles upon a well-established operation.
In both Parsons’ YouTube series and A24’s Backrooms, it’s established that the Async Research Institute is an evolution of what used to be a company that made MRI machines. When Mary is politely interrogated by Phil, he tells her they know very little about the Backrooms, even looking cautiously at the one-way mirror in the room as if asking permission to tell her more. It would be easy to take that at face value, but the fact that they’ve got a working door into the Backrooms (known as the “Threshold”) and a multi-million dollar government-backed operation behind it indicates they know more than Phil is willing to divulge to Mary. We never find out how much more.
4
What Is Async’s True Endgame?
Phil claims they’re simply learning as much as they can about the Backrooms.
In that vein, it’s never made clear what Async really wants with the Backrooms. The spirit of exploration and education of the mysterious space is all well and good, but with the amount of technology and financial backing at play there, it’s clear there is a more concrete purpose to their research. In the YouTube series, it’s established that they see it as a solution to the global storage and housing crisis brought on by the exploding population of the back half of the 20th century, but even that seems like a thin cover for something either much more lucrative or much more dangerous. If Backrooms does get a sequel, this seems like something that will be addressed.
3
Why Do the Still-Lifes Behave So Differently?
The temperaments range from extremely violent to completely docile.
In the expanded lore of the Backrooms, there are literally hundreds of different “entities” that haunt the infinite space. In Parsons’ YouTube series, the most problematic creature is the Life Form, which is essentially an aggressive humanoid bacterium. Parsons skips the Life Form in Backrooms, instead depicting creatures known as “Still-Lifes”, the distorted, misremembered copies of human beings. They display a wide range of behavior, with the wheelchair-bound man (credited as Archibald Leland Sutter) seeming downright cooperative versus the murderously aggressive clone of Clark now referred to colloquially as “Cap’n Clark.” There is no outright explanation given for the variance in behaviors, with the most common theory being that they reflect their real-world counterparts’ temperaments.
2
Was the Red-Headed Still-Life Clark’s Wife?
Her reactions may provide an answer.
One of the three Still-Lifes that Clark befriended (?) in the Backrooms was a red-haired woman in a trim business suit. Clark’s ex-wife Barbara is shown only once before in the movie in a bedside stand photo, and she too has red hair and is in school pursuing a law degree. Those features, plus her frightened reaction when Cap’n Clark approaches, have many theorizing that she is in fact a clone of Clark’s wife, manifested in Clark’s section of the Backrooms just as the terrifying peg-legged copy of Clark was. Despite Clark scalping the Still-Life so that Mary could properly portray his wife in his forced role-playing exercise, there is no actual confirmation that it’s Barbara’s clone–although it seems obvious Parsons intended to spark that speculation if not.
1
What Happens to Mary After She Escapes the Backrooms?
After nearly being killed at the hands of Cap’n Clark, Mary is removed from the Backrooms by Async researchers, who take her out through the Threshold and into their facility. After getting a brief inadvertent tour of the facility after cleaning up and changing, she is questioned by Phil, who very unsubtly hints that she is not going to be permitted to leave the facility after her questioning, or at least not for some time. Backrooms ends with the haunting image of Mary’s misremembered clone sitting still in the misremembered version of the interrogation room that exists in the Backrooms, which doesn’t actually provide any clarity about what happened to her. If there is a Backrooms sequel, it seems more likely that it would be an anthology-style movie that would focus on a new set of characters, meaning we may never know what actually happens to Mary.
- Release Date
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May 27, 2026
- Runtime
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110 minutes
- Director
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Kane Parsons
- Writers
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Will Soodik
- Producers
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Chris Ferguson, Dan Cohen, Dan Levine, James Wan, Jenno Topping, Kori Adelson, Michael Clear, Osgood Perkins, Peter Chernin, Roberto Patino, Shawn Levy
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