Getting lost in the 'Backrooms' with Chiwetel Ejiofor.

“I didn't know about the Backrooms. I’d heard a bit about liminal spaces and how they were creepy and what they were, but not that much,” explains Chiwetel Ejiofor regarding his prior knowledge of the lore behind the box-office smash, Backrooms. 

Welcome to the YouTube Renaissance. 

From the Australian-Greek ‘RackaRacka’ brothers Danny and Michael Philippou gifting us unique horror films Talk To Me and Bring Her Back, to the recently debuted American Kane Parsons aka ‘Kane Pixels’ becoming, A24’s youngest director at just 20 years old - it’s clear something’s in the air and YouTube is at the forefront. 

Director Kane Parsons and actor Chiwetel Ejiofor on the set of Backrooms

Parson’s feature length directorial debut stars Academy Award nominated actors Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. A sci-fi horror called Backrooms, its origins can be traced back to the internet space, 4chan and developed into something known as a creepypasta, an internet legend which gets passed around the internet. 

First posted in 2019, The Backrooms was a single image which over time developed into wider lore with ever expanding concepts and storylines. Parsons would then take this image in 2022 and use it to create a viral YouTube mini-series which reignited the lore and caught the attention of the right people, leading to the creation of Backrooms (2026). 

It’s where we meet Ejiofor, who plays the surly Clark. Clark owns a not so successful furniture store, Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, For All Your Furniture Needs! 

For Ejiofor, Clark was someone who was “easy to recognise, in a sense that he’d obviously reached a point in life where he felt pretty disappointed with some of the things that had happened, and he just wasn't very skilled at trying to get out of that space and so we centre a lot of that in rage and in this kind of barely sort of held together depression.”  

We spend moments throughout the early film with Clark in isolation, surrounded by this extremely large space, a (discount) furniture store. There’s something deeply sad about this but also as Ejiofor puts it, “something really endearing” and the actor found himself moved by it during script read-throughs. Clark's nature creates his isolation but it also lets the viewer know that he’s searching for something much larger than himself. 

“I didn't realise that it was the first time that it had been created, you know, that it would have to have been properly built. I thought that for sure there had been another set, however small, that had been part of Kane's world building when he was making the series. There'd be just one corner of somebody's garage that they used to film a little bit of The Backrooms, but they hadn't.” 

Parsons had used open source software, Blender to create his series but now it had to be taken from the screen to the real world. It was quite an “exciting” feat and for Ejiofor it was good to interact with the space in a genuine manner, “you'd be trying to cut through to catering by crossing the set, and then you'd end up in the wrong part of the stage, and you'd be like, “oh”. It was great to have an understanding that this is a place which has an interaction with you as well, because that's the journey of the film.”  

Overall, Backrooms is well-paced and enjoyable to those who may not even be aware of its backstory. The minimal cast serves to heighten the suspense and we follow Clark on his journey culminating in a tense final act which you can’t quite tear yourself away from, no matter how panic-inducing it feels. 

Ejiofor credits the filming making experience as being, “intense, weird, and bizarre” words which perfectly sum up how the film leaves the audience too. 

And on spaces or moments that feel liminal to the actor? 

“I think the liminal spaces that freak me out the most are the ones that are like after a party, you know that, like, where the weather, the language of what the space is doing doesn't connect entirely to what is happening at that, at that moment in that space. So a pool party where there’s red cups everywhere, there's, maybe a floatie still in the pool and there's bottles around. It's a bit of a mess, but there's just nobody there. After a very short period of time, if I'm seeing an image like that, you know, it starts to kind of feel very unnerving to me.” 

Backrooms is available to watch in UK cinemas now.