MOVIE REVIEW: BACKROOMS (R)
Grade: B
Hot on the heels of the box-office juggernaut that is Curry Barker’s Obsession comes another horror piece made by a YouTube content creator, this one courtesy of Kane Parsons, who at only a mere 20 years old, has directed an effective and unique genre-bender called Backrooms. For the uninitiated, this movie is based on a web series Parsons put together after being inspired by a liminal spaces-oriented creepypasta when he was only 16. Seeing potential for a big screen expansion, A24 stepped up to the plate and rather than milking this concept and handing it off to some journeyman director with no real grasp of the source material, they gave Parsons a shot (along with screenwriter Will Soodik) and the end result is this wild ride of a movie that lands somewhere in between the surreal stylings of a David Lynch film and the creative nature of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone.”
In Backrooms, we’re introduced to Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a recently divorced furniture store owner who’s been saddled with quite the string of bad luck. His recent separation and failing business only succeed in furthering his escalating drinking problem. With nowhere to turn, Clark reaches out to therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Sentimental Value Oscar nominee, Renate Reinsve) in the hope that she might help him get his life back on track. Ultimately, his existence is thrown into an even deeper tailspin when he soon discovers a portal to another dimension in his furniture store basement; A dimension that leads to a seemingly never-ending collection of interconnected office space-like rooms. Some of these rooms are empty while others feature everything from randomly placed pieces of furniture to other familiar odds and ends. As a collective, these liminal spaces sometimes feel like they’d be perfectly at home in a book of M.C. Escher artwork.
Upon making this startling discovery, Clark is compelled to search through several of these rooms, looking for answers of some kind. Adding to the overall eeriness of the situation is that while these liminal spaces appear to be deserted, Clark can’t help but feel he’s not alone. In an effort to keep his sanity, he seeks assistance from a couple of employees and eventually, Dr. Kline, to help him make sense of his never-ending curiosity regarding this alternate dimension. What follows is an intriguing and methodically paced slow build that will certainly evoke many a post-viewing discussion.
If you’re thinking the proceedings sound infinitely weird, they are, but in a good way. No doubt, this film (which sometimes plays like a fever dream) will be divisive, particularly for viewers who want answers to all the questions that are posed but Parsons is more interested in taking a “Let’s leave a lot of this stuff open to interpretation” approach and in the case of Backrooms, this particular approach really worked for me. Beyond that, while this isn’t necessarily a narrative or character-driven film, it does offer two strong leads, both of whom have a surprising amount of depth, and while their psychological issues aren’t necessarily directly tied to the twisty nature of the backrooms, there’s certainly a metaphorical angle at play in this movie.
As previously mentioned, Ejiofor and Reinsve are solid here. At the very least, they breathe life into dialogue that might have gone south in the wrong hands. As a frustrated man looking for a (peg) leg up (that pun will certainly make more sense to you after you’ve seen this film), Ejiofor delivers. He’s really great in this and it’s a testament to his ability as an actor that his increasing curiosity regarding the backrooms becomes our increasing curiosity as viewers. Furthermore, his emotional digging in the final act really lends weight to the proceedings. Likewise, as good as Ejiofor is as Clark, Backrooms is every bit as much about Dr. Kline, and Reinsve is terrific in the role of a woman dealing with issues of her own, brought on by a complicated childhood.
Parsons does a great job building a sense of intrigue and in some cases, an impending sense of doom. He does so by way of plenty of cinematic tricks, including an extended (and intense) found footage-like sequence that breathes new life into a rather tired subgenre. Of course, he gets a ton of mileage out of his aforementioned leads, stellar cinematography by Jeremy Cox (who also shot Osgood Perkins’s Keeper), and incredible production design by Danny Vermette. As one would expect, the backrooms that make up the majority of this film aren’t merely locales, they also serve as characters in this experimental piece and from a visual standpoint, these rooms are as simplistic as they are complex.
As was the case with Skinamarink (a slice of experimental horror that doesn’t quite live up to the hype) and the recently-released Iron Lung adaptation from YouTube content-creator Markiplier (a movie that I have yet to see), Backrooms is more interested in setting out to create a vibe. It isn’t a horror film in the traditional sense, and it certainly isn’t reliant upon relentless cheap jump scares accompanied by obnoxiously loud music cues, but the legions of fans who cherish the Kane Parsons web series that inspired this film are already well aware of that. This isn’t to say that there aren’t traditional creep out moments to be found here. There certainly are (particularly in the final act) but Backrooms really serves as more of an immersive experience (one that is best viewed in a theater) by way of a tone and visual cues that really stick with you. Again, it’s a movie that’s likely to divide horror fans, particularly given the way it answers questions by way of more questions, the lack of a straight forward narrative, and the deliberate pacing (for what it’s worth, Backrooms might have actually been even more effective had it been just a tad shorter), but this particular horror fan greatly enjoyed the overall experience.
