Director: Curry Barker
Cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless
Have I Seen It Before: Never. I will say this for a week without air conditioning, it certainly inspired me to get a little better caught up with what’s new in horror.
Never mind that the theater experience was lousy. One really ought to stick to the rivers and the lakes that they’re used to, I suppose. It’s tempting to reveiw the crowd and the house, but let’s not. Let’s get to the movie itself.
Did I Like It: It’s an interesting dichotomy. I had a perfectly pleasant experience watching Backrooms (2026), but the movie itself wins the second annual Weapons (2025) Award for “What the hell is everyone else so into about this?” Here, the theater made me long from the 85 degree heat of my house, but the movie itself is one of the best of the year.
I guess my problem with Backrooms stems from the fact that the further they descend into the liminal spaces, the more I’m wondering why they keep doing it. Here, our main character (Johnston) starts out on the road to damnation innocently enough. How could he know that the One Wish Willow would work? How could he know that it would go as far as it did?
He sure seemed okay with it far longer than he had any right to be, but that’s a minor quibble. The nerve-wracking, unsettling uncertainty that lurks in the shadow of his bedroom sets ones teeth on edge. Navarrette’s performance as the dream girl who is compelled by forces unknown to become a nightmare, even to herself is truly one of the great horror movie performances in recent years. We’ve opened the gates to films like this receiving awards attention, and there is zero reason her perfectly tuned ability to shift from terrifying to pathetic, to completely normal, and occasionally wind up being all three should be ignored.