Alan Ritchson's 'Backrooms' Replacement Resurfaces On Free Streaming

Published Oct 22, 2026, 11:03 PM EDT Anthony Crislip has always loved movies and television, and has been published in outlets such as SlashFilm and Ultimate Classic Rock. While working as a film programmer or judge at a film festival, he has striven to develop interest in underseen films. He is a particular fan of digging deep into forgotten corners of film history. When it comes to conspiracy action thrillers starring renegade groups working against government agencies, viewers could do a lot worse than Alan Ritchson’s directorial debut, Dark Web: Cicada 3301. Despite its legendarily awful title and the odd pedigree of coming from the man most viewers know simply as Prime Video’s Reacher, the movie is a slick and shockingly funny techno-thriller that wouldn’t have been out of place among the hacker movies of the 1990s. Based on the online puzzles of the ARG Cicada 3301, which began life on 4Chan and were presented as searches for highly intelligent and qualified hackers, the movie follows a hacker named Connor (Jack Kesy) as his own involvement in the Cicada initiative attracts unwanted attention from the NSA. The chase opens in medias res at Connor’s trial and soon reveals the nature of his outrageous story, with bizarre appearances by Agent Carver (Ritchson himself). In a certain way, it’s The Social Network of slick, dumb action movies. The movie’s mix of internet puzzles, enigmatic technical games, and spy chases gives it a bit of Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning vibe, with Tom Cruise’s “living manifestation of destiny” Ethan Hunt replaced by more of an everyman who happens to have hacking skills, a traumatic backstory, and an eidetic memory. With a brilliant, amoral, and too-curious (as well as broke) lead, the movie becomes genuinely engaging. Ritchson’s visual style tends toward the action of Reacher, but he gives the film a cheeky energy and editing scheme not unlike the work of Guy Ritchie, which keeps it from ever falling into truly generic streaming slop territory. Now, with the movie streaming on Tubi, it deserves to find its cult following. 'Dark Web: Cicada 3301' Set the Stage for Other Internet-Oriented Thrillers Image via AllyCat Entertainment As Connor is thrust into this labyrinth of conspiracies, he finds himself counting on local librarian Gwen (Conor Leslie) and his supportive and snarky best friend Avi (Ron Funches), at least one of whom has hidden motives involving the organization. The secret details of Cicada are fairly typical for this sort of film, with the clandestine machinations of its leadership operating under the ostensibly noble goals of achieving equality, but with a methodology that promises more harm than good. Or so it seems. Men like Connor can help Cicada meet their ill-defined goals, but he’s ultimately too independent to fall in line. In a world where Five Nights at Freddy’s and Backrooms show that there is a massive audience for films dealing with primarily online phenomena, creepypasta, and lore hidden beneath lines of code, Dark Web: Cicada 3301 might look a little old-fashioned. Those movies had sequels greenlit immediately, and Cicada 3301 decidedly didn't, with its Tom Clancy-esque take on the mysterious internet phenomenon not inspiring as strong a reaction. Taking the intriguing nature of the Cicada 3301 puzzles, which presented themselves as quests to recruit the most intelligent and independent puzzle-solvers of the digital age and were considered among the eeriest internet mysteries by sites like Metro, and turning it into an action conspiracy thriller might look a little underwhelming. But given the theories about the Cicada puzzles being secret recruiting arms for espionage agencies, it makes quite a bit of genre sense. 'Dark Web: Cicada 3301' Is Basically A Comedy Alan Ritchson’s surprising eye for comedy and physical gags (directly imported from his work in college sitcom Blue Mountain State) also helps the movie work beyond its genre constraints — and having an actual comedian in Ron Funches brightens it up, too. While movies about the seriousness of unveiling discrete information, like Oliver Stone’s 2016 biopic of Edward Snowden or the Adam Driver-starring The Report, play their true stories deadly straight, Dark Web: Cicada 3301 plays almost as parody at times, especially when the government agencies at its center reveal their own incompetence. Ritchson’s Agent Carter is practically the face of that, notably in a fictitious scene where he and other agents show up in the woods wearing nothing but a diaper and a baby mask. That was the director’s own idea. While the movie hardly made big waves — its March 2021 release meant that it skipped theaters entirely, getting just a digital release without much fanfare — its surprisingly elastic tone and energetic pacing warrants another look. The aforementioned “killer rugrats” scene is one of the bolder examples of the movie’s use of comedy, but there’s a general free-flowing vibe to the plot that balances the conspiracy story with engaging character beats, obsession, and a lot of silliness. The movie might have missed its calling as a cable TV “dad movie” classic, but hopefully its availability on Tubi can change that.