New in theaters from A24!
Directed by Kane Parsons.
Written by Kane Parsons, Will Soodik.
Check out the
trailer here!
A troubled furniture store salesman named Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has been kicked out of his home and now lives in his own furniture store. He confides in his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) that he has found a portal in the basement of his store that leads to an immense labyrinth of blandly colored rooms. When Clark disappears, Mary goes to the store and discovers these peculiar backrooms for herself.
Spinning out of the hit YouTube series THE BACKROOMS comes Kane Parsons’ BACKROOMS, an amalgamation of found footage, analog horror, and liminal spaces. For those of you who are not familiar with these concepts, let me explain it from my understanding. Found footage is basically handheld camera footage that, when done right, places the viewer one step closer into the film experience. The frenetic camera movement plus the forced perspective adds a layer of unease that makes the experience immersive.
Analog horror is a bit more complicated. It involves the antiquated VHS format and is less concerned about following a narrative and more about conveying a feeling of dread through archival footage that has been edited together by some kind of omniscient producer. One might call Analog Horror something more akin to Arthouse found footage where the rules of authenticity don’t really apply.
Liminal space is all about setting and atmosphere. It’s almost like a dreamscape where things look to be all in the right places, but something is off the deeper you look at it. Odd angles, peculiar details, strange passageways, and sharp corners decorate a floor plan or scene that doesn’t seem like it makes any kind of sense. As described in BACKROOMS, the space looks as if it was a design to something described to someone who has no reference to that something. Everything feels alien and gives off a sense of unease. Put these three formats together, slap a score made from unnatural sounds and rhythms and you got one hell of a potential for some uncanny feels.
And that’s what BACKROOMS is filled with. Sure, there are a few extremely well-timed and potent jump scares. There is some gnarly gore. And some heavy themes going on, but the bulk of what makes this film stand out from the herd is how it simply and effectively communicates the uncanny. As soon as you enter the Backrooms, things feel wrong. The silence is deafening. The fluorescent yellow lighting gives an almost rotten tint to everything. The walls are plain yet ridged with some kind of strange pattern that is never zoomed in on, so you really can’t understand what it is. The architecture makes no sense whatsoever. Stairs lead to nowhere. Rooms have portions cut out of the floor. Some of the furniture has sunk onto the floor. Some doors open. Some doors don’t. And everywhere, there are corners that lead to miles and miles more of the same. This place is fucking nuts. I mean, the worst job ever would be to baby-proof the backrooms. This is one unsafe environment. Once the viewer is immersed in this backrooms world, it is understandable why that sinking feeling you’ll never get out persists. This is where the bulk of BACKROOMS takes place, so how this setting affects you is going to factor in to your opinion of the film. If you don’t mind that feeling of being unsettled and even enjoy it, then you’re going to love this movie. But if letting a film envelop you and not give you all of the answers is a turn off, you’re not the audience this film is looking for.
THE BACKROOMS YouTube series was chock full of these feelings of uncanny unease. But what BACKROOMS adds to the experience is character and story. See, in most of THE BACKROOMS videos, you don’t know the person behind the camera. It works for short films going simply for a quick reaction, but for a full-length movie you need someone to invest in. This is where Kane Parsons really surprised me. Anyone can string a bunch of weird effects and jump scares together. But Parsons helps create a pair of leads that are complex and flawed in fascinating ways. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Clark is a man lost in his own world. He’s at the ultimate low with very few options to get out of the mess he is in. He tried to make sense of it with his therapist, but that only leaves him more frustrated. All he wants to do is get away from it all and the Backrooms provide just that for him. On the other hand, you have Renate Reinsve as his therapist Mary, who is also very alone as seen through some snippets of her personal life. Even though she seems buttoned down and all-together all together, Mary is scarred by mental illness she experienced as a child with her very sick mother, a paranoid shut-in, warning her of the dangers outside their cluttered safe haven. And the Backrooms represent something completely different to her. It’s really genius that this story is put together in such a sophisticated way that the threat represents something different to the two leads. So, besides the creepy ass setting and way it is filmed, BACKROOMS has characters worth investing in too.
One observation I wanted to make is a particular scene towards the end of BACKROOMS. It’s a dinner scene and it is so bonkers that it really shreds the mind of the characters and disturbed me to hell and back. Now I’m sure Curry Barker (the director of OBSESSION) will do fine as he was recently invited to write and direct the next TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE movie. But after seeing how absolutely sideways and bug-nutz the dinner scene goes in BACKROOMS, A24 might have been a bit hasty in handing over my favorite franchise to Barker. The level of intensity during BACKROOMS’ dinner scene is the closest thing to the absolute chaos Hooper and Co. achieved with TCM. The final reel of BACKROOMS feels like a beat for beat recreation of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. It’s that insane and I’d bet my hard-earned cash money that Parsons would nail it.
BACKROOMS isn’t a wham bang a minute, but if you let it sink in, you’re going to come out on edge and truly disturbed. While it goes into the lore of the Backrooms, surprisingly very little is explained, so like the YouTube series, there are no easy answers to this one. Still, there are so many places this franchise could go. This is a truly impressive debut from Kane Parsons. I can’t wait to see BACKROOMS again and see what he has coming up next.
