I like to see Alice walk through this looking glass.

Would you believe me if I told you that the new psychological horror movie “Backrooms,” starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, was directed by a 20-year-old YouTuber by the name of Kane Parsons? Some may find that hard to believe, but another co-star Mark Duplass denied the rumors saying: “Kane was 100% in control.” And since he is 20 going on 21, that would make him A24’s youngest director. Another milestone for the studio, no doubt. I believe it, and I was watching the movie and admiring how he assembles a team to craft some of the best production designs I have ever seen on film.

For starters, Ejiofor plays Clark, a would-be architect and proprietor of the furniture store Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, and after hours, he finds a door. Not just any door, but one that allows him to phase through into an underground office building of sorts. The walls and carpets are yellow, the furniture is in some kind of sleep pile, there’s a POTS sign (you know what POTS is backwards), some hallways and doors that are small, others that are big, and some kind of slide that leads to another basement. That’s when he needs his employees Bobby (Finn Bennett) and Kat (Lukita Maxwell) to video camera the hidden place to show to his therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Reinsve).

Another thing, the movie takes place in the 1990s, and we can easily tell but the video camera, commercials promoting Kline’s cassette tapes, and cars and buildings. I know because I was born in 1992, and I still watch 90s commercials on YouTube from time to time. For a kid born in the 2000s, he sure knows what things looked like back then, and I’m impressed.

And as we go deeper in the backrooms, we might be reminded of elements from “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “The Dark Crystal,” and “The Shining.” And we might see grocery carts sinking into the carpets or some dirty laundry or some creepy people or creatures. Whatever they are, I don’t know what. This place is full of surprises, and the 90s camera angles really help hence the creepiness.

I’d be lying if I completely understood the story, but I was trying to grasp the new reality “Backrooms” is conveying. And whatever happens, Kline finds out Clark is missing and ventures into the unknown. That’s where she finds out more strange elements of the backrooms, and that’s when we get further proof of the film’s originality.

“Backrooms,” which was also produced by Shawn Levy, Osgood Perkins, James Wan, and Peter Chernin, among others, is based on Parsons’ own series, which regards a facility trying to study the Backrooms and document it. And even that was based on a 4chan trend. And none of them I have heard of or seen before, but looking at this movie really shows us his infinite possibilities. Over 30,00 square feet of the Backrooms were built, and people reportedly got lost in them. So you know the commitment and realism that goes through.

Ejiofor and Reinsve are both very good at adapting to whatever twisted things come out of these rooms, and they seem like good sports being guided by a director that young. It’s a mind-boggling horror movie that deals with childhood trauma and insecurities, and questions the reality of the characters. And as a horror movie with many hallways, I was thinking back to “Exit 8,” which was a Japanese movie about a young man trying to find his way out of a subway station by trying to follow the rules of paying attention to his surroundings. But I was also thinking of those Instagram videos where there’s this CGI monster following you through the hallways. Anything is possible and that’s what kept me guessing about this movie.