Backrooms to The Monkey: the seven best films to watch on TV this week

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in a heart-poundingly original horror, while Theo James plays twins cursed by a killer wind-up monkey. Happy Halloween week!

Pick of the week Backrooms

Director Kane Parsons was just 20 when he shot this genre-redefining horror, based on the “creepypasta” YouTube series he’d been developing since his mid-teens. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, a failed architect who discovers an apparently endless liminal space behind the strip mall store where he works and, depressingly, also lives. Renate Reinsve is Clark’s therapist, Mary, a woman working through her own traumas around enclosed spaces, who nonetheless follows him into these backrooms to attempt a rescue. The wallpaper may be monotonously yellow, but there are scares of every shade here and, underlying it all, the heart-pounding thrill of pure originality. EEJ Monday 26 October, HBO Max