‘Backrooms’ Director Recommends This Disturbing Robin Williams Thriller on Prime Video

Exclusive: As part of Dread Central’s June digital cover story on Backrooms, director Kane Parsons shared one of the films he holds in especially high regard: 2002’s One Hour Photo, the unsettling psychological thriller from filmmaker Mark Romanek.

Starring Robin Williams in one of the most unexpected performances of his career, One Hour Photo follows Seymour “Sy” Parrish, a lonely photo technician whose fixation on a seemingly perfect family gradually spirals into obsession. Written and directed by Romanek, the film remains an underrated and under-seen gem even decades later.

For horror fans looking to revisit the film or discover it for the first time, One Hour Photo is currently available to rent via Prime Video.

The recommendation feels especially fitting given some of the thematic territory Parsons explores in Backrooms. While the two films are radically different in execution, both are interested in lonely people becoming consumed by worlds that exist just beyond ordinary life.

Written by Will Soodik and directed by Parsons for A24, Backrooms stars Chiwetel Ejiofor alongside Renate Reinsve and follows a mysterious doorway that opens beneath a furniture store. The film expands upon Parsons’ viral web series while exploring a sinister endless maze of stale-yellow walls and corrupted nostalgia.