Backrooms' Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Great News for Horror Fans

This article contains discussions about Backrooms' early reviews

A24's Backrooms looked like one of 2026's most fascinating horror movies from the off. Directed by Kane Parsons, the filmmaker who turned the viral "Backrooms" internet phenomenon into one of YouTube's biggest horror sensations, the film adapts the eerie "Creepypasta" concept into a full-scale theatrical experience. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, Backrooms follows a therapist and her patient after they discover a mysterious doorway leading to an endless maze of uncanny liminal spaces. Like Parsons' YouTube videos, Backrooms leans heavily into unsettling atmosphere, psychological dread, and a deeply unnerving concept.

Considering how difficult internet horror has been to adapt, many fans are approaching the movie with cautious optimism. However, early reviews suggest that A24 may have something genuinely special on its hands. Critics have praised Backrooms' atmosphere, visuals, and Kane Parsons' ability to transform surreal internet horror into a theatrical movie while maintaining the original web series' horrifying concept. Thanks to early reviews and a Rotten Tomatoes score ahead of its May 29 release, things look good for Backrooms and horror fans.

Backrooms' Early Reception is Incredibly Positive

It's Enough to Convince Horror Fans to View This on the Big Screen

As of 28 May, Backrooms has earned an impressive 88% on Rotten Tomatoes from early reviews, an especially strong result for a horror movie that's built around such an unconventional premise. The film's reviews repeatedly highlight its oppressive atmosphere and commitment to psychological horror over cheap jump scares. Rotten Tomatoes' early review roundup of Backrooms states the movie is considered:

An unsettling, atmospheric freakout that will dismantle your sense of reality

Multiple critics have also praised Parsons as a major new filmmaker to watch. Given how experimental Backrooms appears to be, the strong reception suggests critics are responding to far more than internet novelty. Several reviews have also noted just how unique and fresh Backrooms feels. The Guardian called the movie "icily disturbing" and praised it for rewriting "the genre rulebook," while SlashFilm described it as a "skin-crawling liminal nightmare." Much of that praise centers around Parsons' ability to preserve the terrifying ambiguity of the original webseries while expanding it into a larger narrative. Rather than over-explaining the mythology or turning the concept into conventional blockbuster horror, critics say Backrooms embraces confusion, unease, and surreal imagery.

Backrooms' Early Success is Exciting For Horror Fans

The Movie Fits Into Positive Hollywood Horror Trends

For horror fans, Backrooms' critical success is exciting for several reasons. Most importantly, it suggests that studios may be finally learning how to adapt internet-born scares without sanding away everything that makes them so disturbing. Analog horror series like The Backrooms, Local 58, and Gemini Home Entertainment became popular because they felt unsettlingly real and deeply unconventional.

Backrooms' early reception is also good news because it continues Hollywood's recent creative streak at a time when audiences are clamoring for more original stories. Over the last few years, movies like Barbarian, Talk to Me, and Sinners have proved that there's still a massive appetite for strange, unfamiliar horror movies that prioritize tension and unfamiliarity over endless reboots and remakes. Backrooms seems to directly fit into that trend while also pushing the genre further into internet-native storytelling. Kane Parsons becoming A24's youngest director at 20 years old also represents a major shift in how Hollywood discovers talent. Instead of adapting, remaking, or rebooting a decades-old property, A24 trusted a creator who already understood why the concept terrified people online.

Whether Backrooms becomes a major box office success remains to be seen, but its Rotten Tomatoes score already suggests that horror fans should be paying attention. And, it signals that an ambitious, unsettling horror can successfully make the leap into mainstream cinema without losing its identity. In an era where horror movies are increasingly safe and familiar, Backrooms seems to successfully make audiences uncomfortable in new ways. For fans of atmospheric horror and psychological dread, that's very good news.