Like many people, I saw Backrooms, and I loved it. I actually didn’t know anything about it before seeing the film, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. I haven’t done any dives into Backrooms YouTube channels or tried any of the games, but I have been searching for movies that give me a similar feel.

There are a lot of things that made Backrooms stand out to me, and the thing I was drawn to the most was the sense of things looking normal, but with an underlying sense of being off. Like at a quick glance, nothing looks out of place, but as you start to look at something, it’s not quite right.

Messiah of Evil, written and directed by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck — a screenwriting duo who would go on to write the controversial Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom — drops us into a small coastal town in California where a young woman goes in search of her missing father. It’s abundantly clear by the start of the movie that something strange is going on in this town. It’s not exactly like Backrooms, but it scratched the itch for me.

You’d think something with a perfect 100% on the Tomatometer wouldn’t be as divisive as it is, but Messiah of Evil sits with a 56% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes. Nevertheless, it’s something that has morphed into a cult classic over the years, so watch it and make your own opinion on it.

Messiah of Evil is now available on Tubi

This cult classic is free to stream with ads

Personally, I watched Messiah of Evil on Shudder since I wanted to avoid ads, so that’s an option if you have it. For a free option, Tubi is available, but you have to keep in mind that you’ll have ad breaks if you go that route. If you’re a The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs fan, he covers this film in his bittersweet very last episode on Shudder.

In most cases, Tubi ads aren’t that bad, but in this movie I feel like they get in the way more than you’d think. There’s not really a rigid story to follow along, so seeing a three-minute ad break out of the blue can really get in the way of the film’s flow. Tubi often doesn’t stream at the greatest quality either. If you can’t watch without ads, I’m sure you’ll be fine, but that’s why I went with Shudder on this one.

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Other films like Messiah of Evil

There’s a lot more out there

Something that immediately came to mind after watching Messiah of Evil is John Carpenter’s The Fog. The Fog is another film about a small coastal town that’s being haunted by the past. It almost has the same setup where something that happened to the town a century ago is happening again, and there’s nothing the townsfolk can do except deal with it. Personally, I’m a bigger fan of The Fog than I am Messiah of Evil, but I’d say both are well worth watching. There’s a 2005 remake of The Fog that I haven’t seen, so I can’t speak on that one. I haven’t heard great things, but it has Tom Welling of Smallville fame in it, so how bad can it be?

Of course, the main reason I’m writing this story is because of Backrooms, and if you haven’t seen that yet, you should get out to a theater and watch it. Between that and Obsession, it’s been a banner year for theatrical horror, and I hope the upcoming Evil Dead Burn can keep that up.