By George & Josh Bate
Most cinematic universes and decades-spanning literary franchises don’t have the rich lore and history that the Backrooms has. A disquieting image of a carpeted room brightened by fluorescent lights and divided with pale yellow walls (which was later revealed to be an innocuous picture of a furniture store in Wisconsin undergoing renovations) became the basis of subreddits with hundreds of thousands of members, a myriad of YouTube and TikTok videos dedicated to expanding the worldbuilding of the Backrooms, and, eventually, a hit short film that spawned into a 23 episode series. Aptly titled Backrooms, the series saw YouTuber Kane Parsons elevate the Backrooms from Reddit obscurity to the mainstream with footage that some branded “the scariest video on the internet.” Now, Parsons (at just 20-years-old) makes his feature directorial debut and brings the Backrooms to the big screen with a film brimming with craftsmanship, unsettling atmosphere, and bursts of horrifying imagery.
Set in 1990, Backrooms follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner and failed architect. Clark laments his recent divorce with his therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) as he’s been kicked out of his home and sleeps every night at his furniture store. One night, Clark goes into the basement of his store and accidentally stumbles into an otherworldly dimension that appears like massive, never-ending, and unsettling office space. As Clark’s curiosity leads him to investigate the nature of these backrooms, Mary is inadvertently dragged into a mind-bending and eerily foreboding infinite series of rooms and hallways.
The appeal of Parsons’ 23 episode web series lies in liminal horror. The original image that spawned the entire Backrooms phenomenon possesses an indescribable sense of unease. Something is off, or wrong, but we can’t quite put our finger on it. It appears so exceedingly ordinary that it begins to feel extraordinary, even disturbing. Parsons embarks on a tall task to stretch the admittedly effective yet potentially short-lasting impact of this liminal horror into a compelling feature film, and yet largely accomplishes this feat.
The film’s cold open plays very much like an installment of Parsons’ series. Existing at the intersection of analog horror and found footage, Backrooms begins with a first-person exploration of the aforementioned liminal spaces. Buzzing fluorescent lights brighten vomit-colored yellow walls and carpet. Winding hallways and empty rooms conjure disconcertment. And, slowly, it becomes clear that the office rooms are filled with details that don’t quite add up. Parsons takes his time immersing his audience in the Backrooms with this cold open and, in doing so, immediately and deftly recreates the quiet dread and menace that comes from looking at pictures, watching videos of liminal spaces, or watching his web series.
From there, the film allocates time fleshing out its duo of lead characters. Ejiofor’s Clark makes little effort to hide his discontent with life. His pirate-themed furniture store remains empty most hours of the day as his dreams of becoming an architect steadily vanish before his eyes. Coupled with a failed marriage, Clark finds himself in a difficult spot and has a tendency to blame others for his misfortune, rather than look inward. Enter Dr. Mary Kline. In psychotherapy sessions with Clark, Renate Reinsve’s character is the epitome of composure and emotion regulation, but this outward presentation belies a quiet loneliness. She spends her evenings alone watching commercials of her self book and struggles to fit in at social gatherings. She is plagued by dreams and memories of her childhood home being demolished and her mother’s challenges with delusional thinking.
Together, Clark and Mary initially make for rather intriguing protagonists, who have more in common that one would initially suspect. The juxtaposition of their roles as patient and therapist and their similar struggles with quiet, prolonged mental torment creates an interesting parallel that the film seems destined to explore. An early scene involving a role-playing exercise in which Mary pretends to be Clark’s ex-wife and asks Clark to confront her proves particularly captivating due to the performances of Ejiofor and Reinsve and teases a horror film that will unsettle its audience through both its atmosphere and characters’ psychologies.
Unfortunately, the latter doesn’t exactly come to fruition. After Clark first stumbles into the backrooms and begins his investigation into its geography, the film relegates Reinsve to the periphery, before introducing her for a bombastic conclusion, and appears content to throw story and character development aside in favor of delivering fans of the source material the liminal horror they desire. This issue would be easier to overlook if Backrooms didn’t spend excessive time laying the foundation for Ejiofor and Reinsve’s characters, only to eventually show no interest in fleshing them out any further. An intense scene near the conclusion involving the two characters that harkens back to a previous moment seems, at least initially, that will bring the film full circle and round out its characters with powerful arcs, but, instead, it only shines a light on how egregiously the film wastes its phenomenal two leads and makes one question what the purpose of the drawn out time with the characters early on was.
Beyond issues with its characters, however, Backrooms largely delivers in slowly inducing dread in its viewers. Production designer Danny Vermette nails the look, tone, spacing, and geography of the backrooms, while cinematographer Jeremy Cox preserves the lighting schemes that make liminal spaces so unnerving. Alongside Parsons, the two imbue the Backrooms with an intimidating and existentially terrifying scale, made all the more anxiety-provoking by all the little details that off, such as a stop sign’s letters being in reverse or objects lodged in between walls and floors.
The meticulous attention to preserving the aesthetic and tone of the web series ensures that Backrooms will almost certainly satisfy fans who have gone down internet rabbit holes about the Backrooms or who have binged Parsons’ series. There are also attempts to sprinkle in easter eggs and subtly expand the in-world secrets of the Backrooms, but never in a way that alienates those who haven’t done deep dives into explainer videos on YouTube or endlessly detailed threads on Reddit. In this regard, Parsons should be commended for avoiding issues that have marred recent films like The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 – he manages to create a film that simultaneously is entirely accessible to anyone who has never heard of the Backrooms and rewards those who have waited to see the global phenomenon translated to the big screen.
Both helping and hindering Backrooms is a pace that, at best, can be described as methodical and, at worst, can be described as excruciatingly slow. Almost all of the horror from Parsons’ film doesn’t come from jump scares or other overt frights, but, rather, the anticipatory anxiety and palpable dread that kicks in as our characters navigate the liminal spaces, unaware of who (or what) may be lurking around the corner. In shorter bursts, such as in a YouTube series, one can wait at the edge of their seat for 10-25 minutes before something finally happens and your patience is rewarded. But, in the context of a nearly two hour film, patience wears thin. After so much wandering around punctuated by little that truly terrifies, it is easy to become disinterested in what’s going on and, even worse, desensitized at what’s to come.
Backrooms also leans on its Lynchian influences, although not with the success of films like Blue Velvet or Inland Empire. David Lynch made a career out of tantalizing with the abstract and unusual, proving that audiences can remain enthralled and terrified in the absence of clear explanations for what’s going on. Parsons and screenwriter Will Soodik similarly pose questions that are never answered and prove unafraid to populate their film with disturbing, off-putting imagery. And yet abstraction only works as well as it does in Lynch’s film as it is coupled with some kind of thought-provocation or intrigue to ponder over. Backrooms offers neither of these things, instead boggling the mind but never truly getting the viewer to become invested in finding answers or wrapping their head around what’s going on.
VERDICT: 6.5/10
Backrooms is an atmospheric, unsettling, abstract trip. At just 20-years-old, director Kane Parsons brings the horror of liminal spaces from YouTube videos and Reddit threads to the big screen with tension, unease, and the craftsmanship of a seasoned filmmaker. But for as dread-inducing as the film is, Backrooms errs in failing to develop its two lead characters after a promising beginning and is marred by excessively slow pacing requiring patience that is never adequately rewarded. Fans of the Backrooms lore or Parsons’ hit series will get mileage out of the easter eggs and hidden details embedded in the film, while newcomers entirely unfamiliar with the Backrooms will find that Parsons has crafted an accessible horror flick. You’ll be hard pressed to find bigger David Lynch fans than us, and it is clear that Parsons and screenwriter Will Soodik share similar adoration for films like Blue Velvet and Inland Empire in making Backrooms as abstract and trippy as it is. Unfortunately, the two fail to couple abstraction and unanswered questions with anything that provokes thought or intrigues, meaning the film may boggle the mind but never truly makes the viewer invested in finding answers or wrapping their head around what’s going on. Overall, however, Parsons has created a film that cements his status as a promising horror filmmaker to look out for and proves that horror movies can thrive on atmosphere alone, independent of more overt scares. The Backrooms are certainly worth exploring here.