Backrooms ending explained: What's inside the rooms and does anyone escape alive?
The buzzy horror film has just been released in cinemas – and we've unpacked those final moments.
A24
- Tilly Pearce
Published: Friday, 29 May 2026 at 2:17 pm
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*Warning: Major spoilers for Backrooms ahead*
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Kane Parsons's twisted world of Backrooms has made it from YouTube to the big screen – with furniture store owner Clark taking centre stage.
Kicked out from his home by his wife and living in the Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire store's showroom, aspiring architect Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is embittered and feeling hard done by with life, always wanting more but never quite achieving it.
Chugging back beers at the end of every shift, the only people he seems to spend any time with are his therapist Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) and his staffers Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and Bobby (Finn Bennett).
But then he stumbles through a wall and into a labyrinth of creepy yellow rooms, filled with bizarre things that seem to make little sense, and he becomes obsessed with discovering and mapping the mysteries that lie within them – especially the monster that appears to be lurking in the shadows.
While the backrooms seem somewhat content to let him explore, things go south quickly when he brings along Kat and Bobby to capture video evidence of the rooms to prove he's telling the truth to Mary.
Meanwhile, Mary, who has made a living (even a book) helping others through trauma, is living with her own. Also introverted and removed from life, she grew up with a mentally ill, hoarder mother who confined her to the house until she was taken away. So when she hears Clark's story, she's alarmed – which only gets worse when he calls to say he no longer needs their sessions.
So what exactly are the rooms, what do they mean, and who makes it out alive? Here's what happened by the end, and what you need to know.
Backrooms ending explained: What exactly are the rooms?
The backrooms, as explained by both Clark and Mary in the film, "are like trying to explain a dog to someone who's never seen one, and getting them to draw it". Every turn leads to a new discovery, doors are windows, furniture melts through the floor, left is right. Everything is open to interpretation – and this is important to remember going forward.
It's part of the reason Clark is so obsessed.
He later comes to realise that the backrooms absorb the memories and traumas of those who enter. But "the more you remember, the less you remember". So over time, the more memories fade, the more things get distorted. People's faces twist with extra body parts, positioning of furniture becomes less accurate, humans turn into a marshmallow-type interpretation of the person (you can even eat them... which Clark demonstrates by munching into the stomach of a guy sitting at his old dinner table.)
What has created this alternate dimension is not clear, and neither are the monsters behind it. As far as we see, they exist only to the person it attacks as it consumes them.
Who makes it out of the Backrooms alive?
The tragedy of the backrooms is that you're beholden to your own memories and trauma, and as a result, it seems no one makes it out alive.
An unknown man is the first to go, with opening scenes revealing found footage before he's caught by a mysterious figure.
Next is Bobby, who is taken in by Clark alongside Kat, and drops down a steep hallway in the floor with his camera. On his way back up, he's caught and pulled back in, leaving behind a pool of blood and drag marks through a sideways door. We only ever see a tail of what got him.
Kat is next, disappearing as she runs off into the backrooms alone. While we never see her alive again, her head is later seen in Clark's fridge – and it's suggested he may have even been the one to kill her, not the monster, as his own psychosis took hold.
Clark accepts his fate as wanting to be in there, stuck with his own warped versions of his memories. Capturing Mary as she comes to look for him and tying her down for a particularly chilling dinner, he has embraced life in the backrooms. A silent and skewed form of his wife stands in their kitchen, he can eat the humanoid things around him (because they're not real and don't feel pain) and, even when Mary snaps and berates him for blaming what's wrong in his life on everything and everyone but himself, he takes that as a resolve that he's happy with who and where he is.
But then the monster, presented as Cap'n Clark, the corrupted version of himself from the TV ads, posters and statues used to promote the store, arrives. It doesn't like to hear that, so picks him up and eats him.
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Mary uses Cap'n Clark's meal as a distraction to do a runner, but the distorted vision is quickly after her. She thinks she's escaped and back in the furniture showroom but it's just another memory, and just another backroom. As all hope seems lost, she is captured by a group of men in coloured Hazmat suits, who drag her out of the showroom, clean her up, and seemingly get her to safety.
She then meets a researcher named Phil (Mark Duplass), who has made several quick appearances throughout the film, who arrives to discuss with Mary what she saw. But it becomes clear that, despite what she's seeing, Phil's conversation makes her realise she's still in the backrooms.
Phil works for a mysterious company called "The Async Research Institute" – which fans of the YouTube shorts would be somewhat aware of already, as they've existed throughout the lore created by Kane Parsons.
When she asks if she'll ever be allowed to leave, he doesn't answer her – but as cameras pan through the rooms, we find her memories have been added. Her demolished childhood home, the hoarder-filled house she grew up in, a bookstore with a display of her self-help book... and finally Mary herself, her face distorted as she sits silently in an empty room, as she becomes another memory for the rooms to hold on to.
We never know for sure what her true fate is, with reality in the rooms so mangled it's unclear whether even Phil is talking to Mary, or just a version of her.
What does Async want with the backrooms?
Async's interest in the backrooms is still open for debate. In the film, Phil explains that at one point they built MRI machines, but he stops short of explaining what it is they're doing now, and what they're doing in this alternate world.
In the YouTube short films, it's suggested Async want to figure out how to use the backrooms to their advantage. With entrance portals all over the world, there's a possibility they could utilise them – maybe even earn some money. So they built their own door, and are now researching what exactly is hidden inside first.
The found footage that opened the film was someone from Async on a recon mission of the backrooms, and was left the last remaining person alive from their group until he was taken too.
So they've yet to quite nail their whole operation, which is why they were grilling Mary for information.
Will there be a sequel to Backrooms?
Renate Reinsve as Mary in Backrooms. A24
If creator Kane Parsons has his way, Backrooms is only the beginning for the world he wants to develop, with hopes of turning it into an anthology.
As you may already know, Backrooms started life as an online creepypasta, with a then-teenage Parsons taking the ghost story and running with it, creating 25 short films shaping Backrooms and the lore of the world.
Now age 20 and with his first movie coming out, it seems the only way is up for the creator, who explained he'd gone "as far as he could" with his YouTube series.
Talking to Polygon, Parsons said: “[Sequels are] more than an option – it's been the intention since 2022.
"I thought it'd be a much slower road to get to where things are now. This film is the first part in what I would desire to be several narrative steps, in terms of approaching what I consider to be the true heart of the idea.
"I just don't think you could get to it in the time you have for a single movie.”
Backrooms is out now in cinemas.
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Authors
Tilly PearceFreelance Writer
Tilly Pearce is a freelance TV journalist whose coverage ranges from reality shows like Love Is Blind to sci-fi shows like Fallout. She is an NCTJ Gold Standard accredited journalist, who has previously worked as Deputy TV Editor (maternity cover) at Digital Spy, and Deputy TV & Showbiz Editor at Daily Express US.
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