Does Backrooms Set up a Sequel?
Kane Parsons’ Backrooms is a surrealist descent into a liminal nightmare of winding sallow corridors and misplaced furniture.
The film involves down-and-out furniture store owner Clark and his therapist, Mary, entering the alternate dimension of the ‘Backrooms’ via Clark’s warehouse basement. There, they encounter an endless warren of nonsensical rooms and hallways, sparsely populated by randomly generated objects that appear to mimic the memories of those who enter. They’re also stalked by a large, dark entity that kills indiscriminately.
While Backrooms has a fairly conclusive ending, there’s certainly plenty of scope for a continuation should Parsons’ film do critically and commercially well enough. Here’s how the movie sets up a possible sequel – and be warned, there are major spoilers from this point on.
How Backrooms Ends
Unfortunately for him, Clark doesn’t survive the Backrooms. Once the monster that has been roaming the maze is revealed to be a twisted, giant copy of him in his pirate costume (the furniture store mascot), it swiftly kills him. This leaves Mary to flee to an exit, pursued by the insatiable Backrooms Clark. After making it back to the furniture warehouse, she fends off the entity and is knocked out by ASYNC Research Institute workers in hazmat suits, who have been observing the realm's latest visitors.
ASYNC appeared at the start of the film during a first-person sequence, in which one of their workers, also running from the monstrous version of Clark, called for help at a control room set up in the Backrooms. Instead, he was brutally killed.
When Mary comes around, she passes a room in which Backrooms Clark has been laid out on a slab, probably for examination. She’s then interviewed by an ASYNC employee, Phil, played by Mark Duplass, about how she entered the dimension and what she experienced in there. Phil doesn’t give too much away, but he does confirm, crucially, that the Backrooms is some kind of dimension parallel to our own, and the furniture store isn’t the only way into it.
His company, which was initially established to produce MRI machines, is now solely devoted to investigating this dimension.
Why This Ending Could Lead to Another Film
The existence of ASYNC opens up a labyrinth of possibilities to expand on the original Backrooms story. Another film could take the form of a prequel tracing the company’s shift from MRI technology to the discovery of the Backrooms and its early forays into the mysterious space.
As well as this feature-length film, the Backrooms extended universe includes director Kane Parsons’ (Kane Pixels on YouTube) original short film, web series, and, most significantly for this particular thread, The Backrooms Company video game, in which you follow in the footsteps of missing ASYNC explorers in the liminal space. Released last summer, the game and the fan lore around it - and the inciting Creepypasta image - provide not only more lore about ASYNC but also a story framework that another feature-length Backrooms film could adapt.
Alternatively, a sequel could, of course, continue following Mary, either collaborating with ASYNC or dealing with the trauma of what she experienced in the surreal hell hole. The final shot of the film is of her own disfigured Backrooms counterpart, ‘remembered’ from when Clark kept her prisoner. As Clark’s extra-dimensional copy turned out to be a creature of pure rage and bestial instinct, the space may mimic whatever is the strongest personality trait or emotional state you bring into it. Mary was already dealing with unresolved trauma from a childhood spent trapped in her home by a paranoid and agoraphobic mother. Being held captive by Clark in the Backrooms would have only heightened these feelings, so it’s possible this copy of her could become a new monster and terrorise whoever stumbles into the Backrooms next.
The One Thing That May Rule Out a Backrooms Sequel
Backrooms distributor is cult studio A24. This means further films are less likely because the company has historically preferred to only produce standalone projects. This is more common for independent companies, generally, due to financial constraints, but it also adds more prestige to their catalogues. Rather than milk IPs for all they’re worth and risk watering them down (think long-running superhero universes and slasher series), the ‘one and done’ approach prizes quality control and uniqueness above content grinding.
There are a couple of notable exceptions. The biggest is Ti West’s X trilogy, a campy splatter-fest starring Mia Goth that uses an anthology format very effectively across three different time periods. There’s also arthouse darling Joanna Hogg’s two-part Souvenir film series, and the Australian Philippou Brothers are set to make a follow-up to their much-admired supernatural horror debut Talk to Me. So, while we can’t rule out A24 greenlighting another Backrooms project, it’s far from a guarantee.
