Backrooms is the kind of movie that loves to end on a half-resolved riddle, leaving its audience haunted by questions. Let’s try to answer as many of them as possible.
The short films from Kane Parsons that expand the Backrooms universe have become, since their 2022 YouTube release, monuments of internet horror and of the so‑called “liminal” horror aesthetic (which hints at hidden spaces at the edge of our reality). The phenomenon is now crossing into theaters with the feature-length version, still directed by Kane Parson, and it’s already a real hit.
Yet there’s every chance that, among the very many people who rushed to the cinema to discover the film with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, some (perhaps many) left with heads full of questions. And that’s entirely understandable, since the film’s ending raises more questions than it answers.
It’s an obvious aim of the director to keep the Backrooms universe and what might happen to the characters who step into it shrouded in ambiguity, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting to shed light on certain elements and take stock of the movie’s ending. WARNING: SPOILERS!
The “Real” Meaning of Backrooms?
The first person you’d want to ask to explain the ending of Backrooms is obviously the film’s director himself. And that’s exactly what Polygon did in a recent interview, but as any artist who respects themselves, Kane Parson refused to spell out in words what he deliberately left vague through the imagery:
“I’m not really inclined to explain the things that happen in my films. I promise I’m not trying to dodge it, but the audience for my work loves to rely on what I say rather than their own interpretation. I want to be careful, because everything I say is taken very (too) seriously.”
Nevertheless, Polygon still managed to poke at the director for his take on particular elements, notably the relationship between Clark and the Backrooms. The film’s protagonist, broadly disliked and unlikable, ultimately views the Backrooms trap as a place where he could live quietly, gnawed by his hate and guilt. But that’s because he underestimates the self-destruction that hatred can sow and ends up devoured by his own avatar… Parson explains it thus:
“Clark is in a kind of echo chamber. This space becomes a kind of constant re-digestion of his inner world, spit back onto the walls in a way that makes him feel it’s beneficial to him. It resonates with a kind of deeply rooted desire or void he has carried inside for a very long time. It makes him feel like he’s filling that void. But I think this healing or peace process is misleading to the senses. I think it’s certainly a state of being diluted in which he’s forced by the ruin of his former life, before he found the Backrooms, and which has been exacerbated.”
If Parsons agreed to share this reflection on how the Backrooms trap Clark by sealing him off in his own subjectivity, he declined to explain the exact nature of the rogue, what treatments Async staff subjected him to, and what really happened to Mary, the therapist.
That last point, however, deserves a closer look. The ending of Backrooms catches the viewer off guard because it first shows Mary being retrieved (saved? not entirely) by the company Async, which appears to be conducting a more or less scientific study of the Backrooms. The man interrogating her in a stark room reveals that Async was originally a company that manufactured MRI machines and pivoted when its employees discovered the Backrooms.
The man refuses to give Mary more details, and when that scene ends, the audience isn’t even sure that the therapist will be able to return home as a free woman. However, when the image cuts, the audience is confronted with a deformed Mary avatar trapped inside the Backrooms. Sitting in a room reminiscent of the interrogation room, but without a window and without furniture, the avatar lingers on the same chair as its model and stares into the void in silence.
That is the image that closes the film, leaving viewers unsettled: does this twisted version of Mary (and the other stand-ins of visitors seen in the film) possess a consciousness? Does it carry any of Mary’s personality? Has Mary left a piece of herself inside that shell?
But more importantly: given that this avatar never appeared elsewhere in the film, should we assume the Backrooms created it from Mary’s memory only after she left, or… did Mary get sent back into the Backrooms by Async until the place remembered her enough to spontaneously construct this copy? Since Async’s intentions toward Mary are utterly unclear, that these lab coats seem intrigued by creating stand-ins, and the mere cut between the interrogation scene and the final image don’t reveal how much time has passed between the two, this horrific hypothesis remains possible.
And, in keeping with Kane Parsons’ own intention to launch an anthology of films drawn from Backrooms, the clear, definitive answer to this question will have to wait for the next film in the budding saga. If such an answer ever comes. Backrooms is in theaters as of June 17, 2026.
