'Backrooms' movie ending explained as creator spills on series' future
'Backrooms' movie ending explained as creator spills on series' future
Brendan Morrow, USA TODAYSat, May 30, 2026 at 12:15 PM UTC
0
Spoiler alert! We're talking about the biggest reveals in "Backrooms" (in theaters now) and the movie's ending, so turn away if you haven't seen it yet.
The world of "Backrooms" isn't done expanding.
The new horror movie brings Kane Parsons' web series, itself based on an internet meme, to the big screen. But the 20-year-old has ambitious plans for "Backrooms": more movies, YouTube videos and even a TV show.
From the start, "I didn't know exactly what container, medium-wise, the narrative would take at different stages, but I knew I was going to be working on 'Backrooms' for a good handful of years," he says. "And I still feel that way. ... I know it's not done. It feels like the narrative is very much hanging in an unfinished state."
Let's dive into what happens in "Backrooms," how it ends, and what Parsons says about what's next.
Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox
In "Backrooms," Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) encounters a monster while exploring an otherworldly dimension.What is the creature in 'Backrooms'? Robert Bobroczkyi revealed as 'Pirate Clark'
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in "Backrooms" as Clark, a man who discovers a doorway to another dimension inside the basement of Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire, the furniture store he owns. He quickly becomes obsessed with this realm, which consists of sparse rooms with inexplicable contents, and recruits employee Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and Kat's boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) to join him in exploring it. But things go south when the trio are attacked by a monster, which kills Bobby but is initially kept out of view.
Eventually, Clark's therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) heads into the Backrooms to search for him after he rants about the place in therapy and then leaves her a cryptic message about how he "won't be coming back." When she finds Clark, it's immediately clear he has lost his mind. He has Kat's severed head in a fridge, and he ties Mary up at a table next to people with distorted faces who look like human beings, but aren't.
Clark explains these "people" are the products of the Backrooms remembering actual humans from the outside world, but not getting the details right. They're referred to in the credits as still lifes, and it's suggested that one of them, a woman with red hair, might be modeled after Clark's ex-wife, based on the way he forces Mary to wear her hair so she resembles his ex.
Soon after, the main monster of the movie emerges: a giant creature with a peg leg and pirate hat. Just as the still lifes are misremembered people, this creature is the result of the Backrooms misremembering Clark's pirate character from his furniture store commercials. In fact, the credits refer to the monster as "Pirate Clark."
The Pirate Clark performance is credited to Robert Bobroczkyi, a 7-foot-7 former basketball player who also played the human-xenomorph hybrid in "Alien: Romulus," though the creature's face is modeled after Ejiofor.
What is the Backrooms?
The most specific explanation we get about the Backrooms is that it's a place made entirely out of things that have been from the real world, but misremembered, leading everything to be slightly off. That's why we see not only the still life people, but objects from Clark's store, including signs and pirate ship wheels, in places they shouldn't be.
Advertisement
Parsons stresses that the Backrooms, as he sees it, isn't a "simulation or anything digital," nor is it some sort of purgatory. Instead, it is simply an impersonal "force of nature."
"It's not like a damnation," he says. "It's not like you have a weight on your soul and you did something wrong, and so therefore, the Backrooms consumes you. It's that reality broke, and it [messed] up ... a real, tangible, solid entity that is not a psychic phenomenon or a shared dream or anything that gets too magical."
How does 'Backrooms' end? What happens to Mary?
After the monster attacks and kills Clark, it pursues Mary in a pulse-pounding chase. She manages to escape and runs into scientists from Async, a research institute that has been studying the Backrooms. Async and its history is the focus of most of the episodes of Parsons' web series.
One of these scientists, Phil (Mark Duplass), sits down with Mary and reveals he has been personally exploring the Backrooms every day, but still doesn't fully understand it. When Mary asks what's going to happen to her, Phil ominously says this isn't up to him, suggesting she may have seen too much for Async to let her live.
Renate Reinsve plays Dr. Mary Kline, who goes searching for her patient Clark in "Backrooms."
The film ends with a series of shots inside the Backrooms, culminating in one of Mary with a warped face. The implication seems to be that the Backrooms has created a "misremembered" copy of her, much like the still lifes she encountered earlier. But the fate of the real Mary isn't confirmed.
Will there be a 'Backrooms' sequel? Kane Parsons teases future of series
So what's next for "Backrooms"? For years, Parsons has known how he wants to end his series, and this planned conclusion is not included in the movie.
"When I started the series for 'Backrooms,' I knew where it needed to go," he says. "I knew what the ending was."
Future films could potentially turn the franchise into an anthology, with each movie following new characters stumbling on the Backrooms. The movie hints at this when Phil mentions that doorways to the Backrooms are opening everywhere, and Async doesn't know how to stop them.
"Backrooms" director Kane Parsons has ambitious plans for the series.
"You can definitely take an anthology approach to Backrooms," Parsons says. "And there's a few more things, I think, that are certainly worth touching on, and I would love to explore in the feature (film) space."
Parsons' ultimate goal, though, is for "Backrooms" to eventually wrap up in a limited TV series.
"I still feel very adamant that it would need to be a television series," he says. "I don't think you can finish 'Backrooms' as a narrative in a bunch of feature films, and I don't even think it would be a good idea to do that many feature films. I think being specific is good."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Backrooms' movie spoilers! Ending explained, monster, what's next
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
