Is there an Oscar in these Backrooms? The YouTube phenomenon is on track to be a big-screen phenomenon as younger audiences turn out in droves to wander through the fluorescent-lit liminal spaces that 20-year-old director Kane Parsons captures on camera. With its largely positive critical reaction, Backrooms also seems poised to reach beyond the traditional horror crowd, much like the breakout Focus Features horror hit Obsession, directed by 26-year-old Cory Barker, who also got his start making YouTube content.
Moviegoers’ general obsession with Obsession has spawned a nascent, but growing fan-led campaign to put the movie’s leading lady, Inde Navarrette, in Oscar contention, a bandwagon that Focus itself may jump on in the coming months. Certainly, the historic acting wins for Weapons scene-stealer Amy Madigan and Sinners leading man Michael B. Jordan at this year’s Academy Awards has left genre fans feeling emboldened about seeing scary movie stars be taken seriously as awards players.
Not for nothing, but Backrooms happens to already star two Oscar nominees — Sentimental Value‘s Renate Reinsve and 12 Years a Slave‘s Chiwetel Ejiofor — which gives it a leg up over Obsession. And Ejiofor in particular delivers a remarkably full-bodied performance as a man who has already lost his sense of self, and proceeds to lose his mind while wandering the desolate hallways and strange cul-de-sacs that make up the movie’s eerie environment.
Backrooms has been compared to David Lynch’s singular body of work, but that late, great director only sporadically broke into Oscar contention. Over the course of his career, he was nominated for Best Director three times — The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive — and saw just three actors from his movies compete for statuettes: John Hurt in The Elephant Man, Diane Ladd in Wild at Heart, and Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story, which was famously Lynch’s first (and only) G-rated movie.
That means that as good as he is in what could have been a thankless role, Ejiofor is unlikely to find another Oscar nod waiting for him at the end of one of those hallways. The same goes for Reinsve and Parsons, whose main rewards will be killer box office. If an established artist like Lynch had to wrestle with voter squeamishness about casting ballots for nightmare fuel, than a new kid on the spooky block like Parsons has to put some mileage in first.
Still, Backrooms has memorable craft elements that are definitely at play in the Oscar race as the movie embeds itself in the national consciousness. Here’s where Gold Derby sees the film being competitive.
Best Production Design
Due apologies to Reinsve and Ejiofor, but the setting is the real star of Backrooms, and the main reason why the concept went viral in the first place. The sickly yellow wallpaper, the endless corridors, the detritus of the everyday world stacked at odd angles — it’s a desolate world that feels both familiar and alien at the same time. Production designer Danny Vermette artfully upgrades the cinematic version of the Backrooms without sacrificing the distinct look and feel that burrowed so deeply into the minds of YouTube consumers. And horror fare generally has less of an issue finding a home in this category; Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein took home the prize earlier this year, while Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu scored a nod at the 2025 Oscar ceremony.
Best Visual Effects
As Godzilla Minus One proved, your movie doesn’t have to have the most visual effects to win over voters. VFX supervisor Edward J. Douglas makes subtle use of digital set extensions and lighting and design polishes. Above all, the visual effects complement the movie’s handmade, low-fi aesthetic, which is another secret behind its YouTube popularity. There will be plenty of big-budget blockbusters in the running for this particular prize — including Supergirl, Avengers: Doomsday, and The Odyssey — which allows Backrooms to make like Godzilla and be the little movie that could… stomp all over the competition.
Best Cinematography
Kudos to Backrooms director of photography Jeremy Cox for finding just the right color temperature to burn these fluorescent backrooms into your eyes and brain. Once again, the recent one-two punch of Nosferatu and Frankenstein — nominated for this prize in 2025 and 2026, respectively — demonstrate how visually-striking horror movies can elbow their way into the cinematography conversation. One thing’s for sure: you’ll never want to walk through an empty fluorescent-lit office space again after Backrooms.
