Backrooms and Jack Ryan: Ghost War Review

The air in the theater changes when you step into the world of Backrooms. It’s not just the dimming of the lights; it’s a shift in pressure, a sudden awareness of your own breathing against the hum of the projector. You know that feeling, don’t you? That specific, hollow dread of walking down a hallway in your own house at 3 a.m., certain you heard something, only to find nothing but empty space and the lingering suspicion that the geometry of the place has shifted while you weren’t looking.

That is the visceral hook of Backrooms, now playing in theaters, a film that translates the internet’s most popular creepypasta into a feature-length experience without losing its soul. Based on a series of YouTube videos that have haunted the collective imagination of Gen Z and millennials alike, the movie anchors this abstract anxiety to a grounded human story. We follow a psychologist, played with quiet intensity by Renate Reinsve, hunting for a missing patient. She isn’t just chasing a ghost; she’s charting the slow, terrifying erosion of a mind that has lost its tether to reality.

It’s a smart move. The challenge with adapting a "vibe" into a plot is that vibes don’t always sustain a two-hour runtime. But here, the horror serves the character. If you’re the type who finds comfort in the familiar, this might feel like a slog. The scares aren’t jump-scare heavy; they are atmospheric, a creeping sense of wrongness that settles in your bones. Yet, if you let it, the film offers more than just unease. Chiwetel Ejiofor holds his own against Reinsve, and together they provide the emotional anchor that keeps you invested when the walls seem to multiply and twist into nightmares. Fans of the web series might lament the lack of deep-level worldbuilding, but for a general audience, the personal journey of these two characters is far more compelling than a lore dump. It’s unsettling, yes, but it’s also thoughtful. It’s worth the drive to the theater if you want to feel truly unsettled, not just startled.

Meanwhile, over on Prime Video, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War feels like a studio executive’s compromise, squished down to fit a movie runtime while retaining the pacing of a canceled television series. You can feel the budget constraints in every cut. John Krasinski continues to do solid work as the former CIA analyst, but the nuance that made the original series watchable has been stripped away, replaced by action that occasionally surpasses its roots but mostly just fills time.

The plot is familiar territory: Ryan, now working in the private sector, gets sucked back into a conspiracy that feels ripped from the pages of The Rock. He’s joined by an MI6 agent, played by Sienna Miller, whose primary character trait seems to be stoicism and chain smoking. There are hints of romance, mostly conveyed through significant looks and vague chemistry, but the movie never quite commits to the emotional stakes.

What really drags the film down, however, is the product placement. It’s not subtle. It’s jarring. You’re watching a tense geopolitical thriller, and suddenly you’re being sold on Emirates Airlines and the UAE with such aggressive clarity that it becomes vaguely embarrassing. It’s a distraction that pulls you out of the narrative, reminding you that you’re watching a promotional vehicle as much as a story. It’s not bad, exactly, but it’s not good enough to justify the time you’re spending on it.

The contrast between the two films is stark. One uses its setting to explore the human condition; the other uses its setting to sell you a flight. When the lights come up in the theater, you’re left with the echo of that yellow wallpaper, that endless hallway. When you pause Ghost War, you’re left with the memory of a plane ticket you didn’t need to buy.