Backrooms (2026)

Darius: Is this the worst movie we've reviewed? I'd have to go to our archive to see if we gave any more. Let's stay. Let's stay.

Jordan: Hey everybody, welcome to the Out Trunk Pile with Jordan and Darius, the podcast where two friends started talking in a bar and never stopped. This is our movie review segment. My name is Jordan. You can find me on all socials at Jordan B Writing.

Darius: And I'm Darius. That's Steve's I love the area on all socials.

Jordan: And today we're going to be breaking down A24's sci-fi horror feature, The Backrooms. Starring Kane Parsons, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark Diplis, and Sophia Lillis. Backrooms centers around a young filmmaker who accidentally clips out of reality. He finds himself trapped in an endless liminal labyrinth of yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lights. As he wanders, he must dodge terrifying entities while a secret corporation attempts to steady the portal. So I'll just toss it to you for act one.

Darius: This is my bad. I wrote that, but he's not a filmmaker in the movie. He's an architect who owns a furniture store. So I don't know where I must have just cross wired on that. So act one, no clipping reality. A lost teen stumbles into a surreal endless maze of empty office rooms. He quickly realizes he is trapped outside normal space with only his video camera for company. Yeah, an hour into this, I had to shut it off and play Madden. So let me just foreshadow a bit of my rating on this.

Jordan: You had a hard reset.

Darius: I turned it on Friday night because I was taking Friday night in the house and I popped some popcorn and I'm like, let me knock out the pod movie. And about an hour into it, I was like, So no, this is not a friend.

Jordan: This is not a Friday night movie. This is the opposite of a Friday night movie.

Darius: I had to finish it Sunday afternoon. We'll put it like that. It is. Yeah, I'll be honest with the audience. It's a tough it's it's a tough watch.

Jordan: They kind of momented it.

Darius: I don't know what they did with it. It's I'm just the guy I watched it. I promise I did. I could not. I don't know what it was about.

Jordan: Yeah, me too. I, I literally wrote down like every time I thought I knew what the movie was about, something happened and then I didn't know what the movie was about anymore.

Darius: It's yeah, I was like, I have here like, is it about the scariness of loneliness? But no, not really. It's just it's a really, really weird movie.

Jordan: Yeah. Yeah.

Darius: I don't I don't know what you got on.

Jordan: So this movie happens. I guess what I have for everyone is so I like to watch a lot of like reaction videos. So like I love music. So I'll watch like vocal coaches reacting to singers performances, stuff like that. So like I'd almost want to watch like a therapist react to this movie and see what they get from it. Because it starts off like with the found footage. I'm thinking like, okay, it's kind of like Cloverfield or like paranormal activity or something like that. And then it comes to like a guy in a furniture shop. I'm like, okay, so we're establishing the world now. And and then you think you kind of have an idea because you see the rooms. It's like, okay, it's kind of like furniture shop. And then you see the guy whose life is like falling apart. And you're like, okay, so this has to mean something here. And then it comes to the scene with this therapist, which And those are the best scenes in the movie because kind of have an idea of sort of what's going on because they're saying words. There's not a lot of words. There's no dialogue in this movie. So it's kind of hard to really follow. It's not hard to follow necessarily, but it's like.

Darius: I take it like his he was going through a divorce. Right. Drinking too much. And his. Yeah. That was why he was with the therapist. But I don't. We'll get to it later. What I think happened with this is that, but I just have that for Act 2 notes and I want to stretch it out because I don't have much else to say about this damn movie. Right, okay, It's just not a good movie. I don't know what to tell the people. You know, I don't know how it's, very popular.

Jordan: Yeah, I've seen it on social media a lot and made a lot of money considering what the budget was.

Darius: It was like 8 bucks. That's... Poor Chiwetel's got to be like, man, I did 12 Years a Slave and 15 years later and still I'm not getting booked for anything. So let me do this internet movie.

Jordan: Yeah, you know, that's what's crazy to me because he's a fantastic actor and he's been great in everything I've ever seen him in for a really long time. And I don't know why he's not bigger. It's very odd to me.

Darius: Oftentimes when that happens, they're just ********* behind the scenes and people don't want to work with them. I don't know that to be the case for him. But if you ever see a prominent actor or actress, you're like, what the hell? What happened to them is probably because they just were the one wanted to work with them.

Jordan: Yeah.

Darius: Yeah, he's very good. And he does the best with this movie, which is just him running in yellow rooms and staring into the abyss. But, you have anything else for act two or act one?

Jordan: Yeah, I mean, I guess so, because I mean, so I thought the handprints in the driveway with the therapist and her mom when she was a kid, I thought that was going to mean like more. I mean, it meant something, but first I thought what the movie was going to be about like the way your childhood impacts your adulthood and then it wasn't about that so it was like okay what was the point of the childhood memory I have a theory on that but I'll have to save that for act three I felt like it's almost like the movie is a metaphor for a maze but the problem is like the point of a maze is to get out of it like so there's a journey there and I feel like There was no journey here.

Darius: Yeah, I think apparently, I guess it was like a science experiment where the point was them to not get out of the maze and they weren't supposed to find it. I don't ******* know. I'll be honest with you, man. I don't do well with bad movies that aren't even, like this just wasn't even entertaining and it was bad. And so, yeah, I just, like I said, I had to stop it. And the little cleanse. And, you know, I watch bad movies quite a bit, but this was and I was like right after I saw Tony, which is not Tony, not like the movie Tony about the Anthony Bourdain biopic. That's not really a biopic. Yeah. And like, that was really, really good. And the next day I try to watch this ******** and it was like tough, you know, it was tough. It's very I feel.

Jordan: Yeah. yeah just made me want to go back to finish rewatch my rewatch of once upon a time honestly I just was like that movie had a journey but it had hope I just felt no hope in this movie

Darius: well I mean yeah what were you gonna say I

Jordan: was gonna say so when I first started watching it and he started to explore more into the maze and the yellow rooms and all that and it was like the everything first was kind of abstract like where everything was slanted but I couldn't tell first I thought it was like like a flat wall things gonna walk into but it ended up being a like a hill or whatever I thought it was like I thought it was like I'm supposed to be like the that Picasso painting where it's like the desert and the flat like melted clocks I don't know if that was supposed to be some sort of allegory there or not so I got frack one.

Darius: I mean, we got a pretty good second out of it. Act 2, endless yellow. His fatigue sets in the endless buzzing lights and repeating hallways erode his sanity. Meanwhile, ominous noises reveal he is definitely not the only thing roaming these deserted corridors. So 45 minutes of nothing happened. And I think that's the problem you run into with this movie is that it shows the limitations of flipping a YouTube sensation into a movie. without Hollywooding things up. This is a 15 minute YouTube thing where the guy talks and explains something he's been thinking. And there's just there's no there there. There's not a movie here like, you know, and it was a viral YouTube video. I think I haven't watched it. And I imagine that YouTube video was not very long and they just tried to cash in on it. I mean, try they did. It worked. But I just don't think there's a movie here because there's no there's no There's no climax. There's no ending. It's just there's no there. There's it's just it's vapid nonsense. Like I don't understand this movie. It's stupid. Like, yeah, anytime if I have to. If your movie relies on explainers after the fact, after the credits roll, you didn't do a good job of telling your story. Correct. You know, if I have to go if I don't get the story in the box of the movie, then, you know, it doesn't mean you have to spoon feed the audience. Like we reviewed the prestige and like it's hard to follow it the first time. By the end, you know what's going on and you watch it second time and things get better and whatever. But this is nothing. It's just it just it's it's a it's 20 minutes of content that they tried to stretch and they just didn't do a good job of it. It stayed too true to the to the original content. It needed to be Hollywood it up.

Jordan: Yeah, that's the problem. Cause like one, there's only two characters. There's it's a two hour movie and there's like 20 minutes of dialogue.

Darius: Yeah, it's like it's a YouTube clip. Like they made a movie.

Jordan: It's a YouTube short. It was so empty. Like I couldn't even imagine reading the script. Like it just says like you run into this room, you run into this room, you run into this room. The end. I don't get it. Literally for me for act 2, all I wrote was cameraman and girl.

Darius: That's all that happens.

Jordan: It's

Darius: I got, I guess, a philosophical question. Two low budget horror movies went viral this year, Obsession and Backrooms. Obsession was good, so that's obvious. This movie was not. Why do you think this went viral? Like, why is this popular?

Jordan: I don't know.

Darius: People love this movie and I don't.

Jordan: I need to watch some YouTube on this because I don't get it. I don't get the movie. I don't know how people love the movie. I mean, act three was kind of interesting, but so much didn't happen. By the time something started to happen, I was just like, can this be over now?

Darius: I will not spend another second of my life thinking about this movie. God bless you. If you go to YouTube and figure it out, I won't be doing that. It is their job. Don't give me homework when the movie's over. It's your job to tell me what happened in the movie. Nah.

Jordan: though check out a review and obsession yeah so I use right I usually watch the movies twice for the pod sometimes three times for this one I was like I'm just gonna do it once I can't do this twice yeah it's just for one you like I didn't really care about the characters because the characters were plot devices they're just pawns in a maze Like a guy going through divorce is not enough of a reason for me to give a damn about his quote unquote journey.

Darius: It's such a YouTube clip. Like it's just they they they put a YouTube clip on the big screen.

Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. I don't I'd love to interview the writer and be like, so what we supposed to like, what were you thinking? like literally what was your thought process

Darius: I actually hope this writer never gets work again uh play in my face with this ******** uh you're ready to get into act three

Jordan: So that's the only thing I have notes for. So yeah, let's get to it.

Darius: Act 3, escape the liminal. Desperate to find a way back home, he follows strange anomalies through the maze while avoiding deadly entities, risking permanent loss in the infinite expanse of the unknown. I have here, this movie stops, but it never ends. I don't know what the **** the ending was I don't know what it was about it just stopped

Jordan: yeah that's a great way to put it yeah my last note of the movie is and I think that's what the movie is trying to say is the maze is basically a metaphor for the human brain I think that's what they're trying to say because she was the therapist was saying like it's all your brain like you control it you know whatever but I don't know But that doesn't even go with like their conversation where he was saying, like, isn't it nice, like, to not be able to feel anything to be like furniture?

Darius: I think as film critics, reviewers, a lot of people, there's a saying, I forget the name of it or who came up with it, but it's It's like never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. It's basically don't assume. I mean, people know I'm not using big words here. People know what that means. And so in movie review, it's like, don't assume some grand plan. It's just a bad movie. They weren't trying to do anything. They weren't trying to make it a metaphor. It's just a bad movie. It's not that we don't get it.

Jordan: It's just bad. And I feel like that whole, you don't get it thing is like, sometimes some things concepts are difficult to comprehend. And that's the point of rewatching movies and rereading books. But if it gets to the point where you walk away and you don't get anything from it, then you just didn't do your job as a artist. Like you didn't deliver it well to the audience.

Darius: No, you know, it's over hit y'all with sayings, but it's like a great argument isn't one a genius understand, it's one a fool understands. So if your movie can only be understood by like. Ten people who, you know, who get the inside joke, then you made a bad movie. I don't know what to tell you. Like, you know, yeah, I don't I'm not an elitist about movies at all. Like, you know, I. I don't need it to be a high concept. It has to be good first. And then you do your thing. But this is not good. There's no there, This is a bad movie. And any attempts to ad hoc, you know, shoehorning explanations, I think are just giving the director and the writer too much credit. I just think this is bad. Yeah.

Jordan: It's just like, what? it's like the end. It's like, okay, was that the big statue version of himself? That's supposed to be like his inner child. That's supposed to be his ego. I don't know. Never explained that. Why did they not explain to her what the hell she was just in? Who was that guy? What does MRI have to do with the maze? Yeah. What does MRI have to do with any of that stuff? Like, I just, none of them made any sense.

Darius: You know, my best stab at it is some science lab was running an experiment and they walked in on it and they had to trap them in there because they didn't whatever they were experimenting with they couldn't get out but that's me mapping on things that were that weren't in the movie you know it's just you know I I don't really think I don't really want to over over think it overthink this one I just think it's bad like some movies are bad some movies Just don't do, they don't, they set out to make a goal and whatever happened just didn't work. I have no idea why this movie is popular. You say you want to talk to the writer. I want to talk to like Joe Blow fan who liked it. I'd be like, okay, well, explain it to me what it, like, there have been bad, there have been movies I didn't like that I understood why other people did. I don't get this one. Like, it's just really dumb.

Jordan: It's like, remember that scene where he's like, It's like explaining a dog to someone and then having them try to draw a picture of it. And it's like, well, that's what this movie is. And I don't think that's what they meant for this movie to be.

Darius: Yeah, they went for some high art concept and I just think they missed the mark.

Jordan: Yeah, I need filmmakers to get back to focusing on story. Like get the story right first and then everything else will fall into place. You know, Sinners was a fantastic story. Obsession was a great story. Like that's why people like those movies. And then you throw in the relatability.

Darius: Keep the main thing, the main thing. There's nothing wrong. tropes are tropes for a reason. You can lean into them. if we like the characters, we'll stick around. I think I mentioned this earlier in the review, but like I just saw Tony the movie last week and that was just a run of the mill come of the age, coming of age story of a young man, you know, leaving his leaving his hometown and There was something groundbreaking about that, but like, it worked and it was good. And if you make a good movie, you don't have to, you know, do all the special things, you know? Yeah.

Jordan: You don't have to assign context and virtue to something that doesn't have either of those things. Yeah, I didn't get it. Like, I just. And then it was, you know, the whole where she's like, you don't have to change. It's okay. Maybe you don't really want to change. Okay. Like, that made sense. But. still doesn't go with the storyline. It's like you tried to combine like sci-fi with therapy and it just didn't work.

Darius: The script should have been burned.

Jordan: You know, at the stake.

Darius: The script should have. This is why I say it should have been Hollywooded up. And I've said this before on the pod that like the suits are right more often than we give them credit for. This is 1 where the suit should have been like, nah, make this palatable. Like make this so the average person going to see the movie understands the ****** going on. You need, we need stuff to actually happen. You can't spend 45 minutes walking around staring into a yellow room. You know, like we need to pretty this up because it's not palatable. If your movie is only accessible to the 15 of your friends, then you need to keep that on YouTube. You know, I don't know what to tell you.

Jordan: Yeah, also a horror movie that's boring and has no horror is going to be a bad movie every time.

Darius: Yeah, foreshadowing my rating, but my rating will reflect the unique badness of this movie. Do you have anything else for X3?

Jordan: The credits were great because that meant I was free from watching this movie.

Darius: I just, again, I can go back to my point, man. It stops, but it never ends. Like this, like it had no ending. And I'm glad that it stopped. We'll go with that. So with that, what do you rate it?

Jordan: The acting was really good, but I'm gonna give this movie 0 stars and I'm never gonna see it again. And I hope no one else ever sees it again.

Darius: I didn't know zero was an option, but I gave it a one. This is, this the worst movie we've reviewed? I'd have to go to our archive to see if we gave any more one.

Jordan: Let's stay, let's stay. Yeah, let's talk about that. I think it was something to discuss.

Darius: You know, we don't have to fill time just to fill time, but let's see if we can stop.

Jordan: I think Low Down Dirty Shame was pretty bad, but it was entertaining.

Darius: Oh, I love that one. I was looking into the one star. We gave. Yeah, we've never given a one star. Well, this is our first one. One star, worst movie we ever reviewed. We spent two hours on this as community service to all of our listeners. And you can save your time, your energy, your space. We appreciate you listening to us, but this was a terrible movie. You could skip it.

Jordan: We truly do. I'm sorry, guys. And A24, y'all really let us down. Y'all haven't done it yet. Done it often, but y'all let us down on this one.

Darius: I appreciate A24 for taking chances and doing original things because this movie is original.

Jordan: You know what I'll give them that.

Darius: But um and we do need that original is like half of it but it has to be good too because I'd rather you do something stale and it'd be good than do something original and it'd be incomprehensible and incoherent.

Jordan: And terrible yeah I agree zero stars and it and I feel like abstaining from entertaining the audience is not a substitute for making a good movie you know what I mean like I feel like they thought like oh if we make it make them think they're supposed to think a lot. That means we made a good movie, but you didn't and you didn't entertain me. So.

Darius: Well, it's like, I've seen The Pianist. Did I find that movie entertaining? No, but I see how someone else would and I can tell it's a good movie. Right. You can do highfalutin artsy fartsy stuff and I can appreciate it, even if I didn't personally enjoy it. But this was none of the above. This wasn't artsy. This wasn't highfalutin. This wasn't high concept. This was just bad. It was just a terrible movie. Horrible. So, all right. Thanks for listening. My name is Darius. That's Dee's all up in the area on all socials.

Jordan: And I'm Jordan. That's Jordan to be riding on all socials.

Darius: Please rate, like, subscribe. We're at out the trunk pod on all socials. That is out the trunk pod on all socials.

Jordan: And for any ongoing move recommendations, feel free to reach out to us via e-mail. That's out, well, outthetrunkpod@gmail.com, outthetrunkpod@gmail.com. That's a wrap. Thanks. Come to the movies with us. Come back next week. We're reviewing the photograph.

Darius: All right, y'all.

Jordan: Take care.