Backrooms (2026, directed by Kane Parsons) starts as a mystery, but as it gets repetitive, it shifts toward rules, and we miss out on the strengths of either approach, committed to more fully.

Fiction balances Mystery and Rules, but tradeoffs appear as the scale gets pushed in either direction.

On the mystery side, a world can feel unknowable, disjointed, or even overwhelming. There’s still structure, but it’s grounded in emotion, dream logic, symbolism, and assocation. Details accumulate in a way that deepen uncertainty, rather than reduce it. The trade off becomes illegibility: as uncertainty accumulates, more viewers become excluded by the work, and fewer experience its logic.

On the rules side, it’s still possible for a world to feel overwhelming, but details accumulate in a way that reinforce each other. The structure comes from consistency, causality, and a sense of concrete order. When a story has clear rules, it has more potential for satisfying reveals, payoffs, and twists because the audience increasingly understand connections. The trade off becomes lore for its own sake: as explanation accumulates the story loses priority.

There are excellent films all along the spectrum, but nuanced stories often commit to moments that create mystery, and commit to moments that ground the audience. Films don’t have to commit to a narrow area, and some great films move along it throughout the runtime. There are sometimes studio pressures that push against an artist’s natural inclinations, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a bit of what happened with Backrooms.

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I joked with my partners before watching, “Do you think it’s a monster movie, or do you think it’s a movie where people are the real monsters?” Of course this is not the only way to categorize horror, but I was surprised at how much it took the air out of the film for me. The film leads us to believe it’s a trauma maze, which is a great video game concept, though I’m not convinced it works as a film concept. I can see the appeal to using a struggling architect and therapist as the protagonists of the film, but I found both of their characterizations a bit broad. Normally this doesn’t bother me in horror, but similar to the world building it felt like a half measure.

Both characters seem to have a history of psychosis or mental illness. Clark may have a history of alcoholism, and as the film continues his rage and delusions suggest he may have a chronic condition, rather than a specific event he needs to heal from. I’m still trying to determine if I feel his character is underdeveloped, or if this is a portrayal of someone who struggles with interiority. Because the film avoids flashbacks for Carl, we only see his behavior and his experience of the backrooms – the effects of his psychology, not possible causes. Because his behavior is relatively one note (angry, frustrated, confused) it’s harder to see him fully.

In contrast, Mary is given a few flashbacks explaining her childhood with an agoraphobic, unwell mother. Mary is on medication, and struggles with branding herself as a psychologist selling self help books and audio tapes. The film doesn’t outright say she’s an illegitimate “self help guru”, though she does doubt herself.

Two characters resolving trauma with complex feelings about their work is perfectly sound. The film doesn’t quite explain whether the backrooms manifest trauma in a purely destructive way, or if the nature of someone’s trauma determines how violent the backrooms become. I think it leans toward the former, because Carl is ultimately undone by his “monster”. A Screen Crush recap argues the backrooms can be both a metaphor for flawed therapy, and a fully realized supernatural space… which leads me back toward mystery.

One approach would stay with Carl the entire time. Through his perspective, the backrooms are much more plausible as a figment of his imagination. A more mixed approach might stay with both characters and understand their histories equally. Even if Carl met the same end he might feel like a dimensional human being rather than a vessel for the film’s setting. If the film went for more rules, it might need more time. In my view the final 10 minutes leave the story open for sequels, rather than deliver fully on the characterization of Carl or Mary. Until that point, the audience largely inhabits the mysteries of the film through them, then are expected to focus on decoding the larger world being researched by ASYNC. If the film committed to its characters, it could have been an evocative exploration of flawed therapy. But with more time, the scope could widen in a way that produces wonder and dread.

Presently it’s a somewhat frustrating middle ground. Part of Backrooms’ strength is that it suggests fascinating alternatives, and has excellent command of visual reveals and set design. I think the next instalment will determine whether that was an accident, or part of a larger, twisted architecture.

(cross posted on letterboxd)