{"id":18937,"date":"2026-08-20T20:00:44","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T00:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18937"},"modified":"2026-08-16T12:34:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T16:34:36","slug":"backrooms-2026-kane-parsons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18937","title":{"rendered":"Backrooms (2026, Kane Parsons)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Chiwetel is divorced and depressed, living in his discount furniture shop, until he discovers a world beneath the world, with layers and layers of increasingly corrupted copies of the ground floor, like <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/13122\">Us<\/a><\/em> squared.  Text is reversed or mutated, everything&#8217;s clipping into the walls, people have the wrong number of eyes, like a discount AI office park.  Chiwetel gets his employees involved in documenting and mapping (leading to too much period-accurate VHS footage), then they disappear in there.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/backrooms2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Every horror movie needs a couple of dummies to kill off.  These two are TV stars from Shrinking (also about a therapist) and the Jodie Foster season of True Detective<\/em>:<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/backrooms1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/backrooms8.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><em>Anyone who has played dungeon games on Apple II knows how to deal with the backrooms:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/backrooms3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Cut to the perspective of his therapist Renate, who makes a solo wellness check and manages to find Chiwetel, who is thriving in the backrooms.  But she should&#8217;ve realized from the crayon wall drawings that her patient had gone &#8217;round the bend, and he should&#8217;ve realized that the movie&#8217;s gonna become a therapy-backstory drama for a while.  He tries to escape this by kidnapping her and showing her around to his new (edible) friends.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/backrooms4.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/backrooms5.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Finally we get back to proper horror when Carl is eaten by Giant Pirate Carl, who chases the therapist through ever more messed-up environments, until her apparent rescue by some white guys.  We&#8217;ve seen these guys before, running their own backrooms explorations, setting up A\/V equipment and apparently alarm-activated canisters of gas-that-does-nothing.  Movie ends with her being interrogated by Phil, who does not imply that she&#8217;ll be safe or released, reminding me of the &#8220;rescue&#8221; at the end of <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/17817\">28 Years Later<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/backrooms6.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/backrooms7.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chiwetel is divorced and depressed, living in his discount furniture shop, until he discovers a world beneath the world, with layers and layers of increasingly corrupted copies of the ground floor, like Us squared. Text is reversed or mutated, everything&#8217;s clipping into the walls, people have the wrong number of eyes, like a discount AI [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2643,3525,1758,1601,54,3526],"class_list":["post-18937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2020s","tag-backrooms","tag-chiwetel-ejiofor","tag-doppelganger","tag-horror","tag-kane-parsons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18937"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18957,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18937\/revisions\/18957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}