Backrooms review

 

Sometimes you can find yourself in one of those shops whose dimensions appear to exceed the space the building occupies. I’ve been in one or two such places and as you start to move away from the hubbub of the entrance, browsing can become a solitary occupation with no other customers around. The further you go, the stranger it can seem. It is this sensation, magnified many times, that Backrooms creates finding scares in such seemingly regular things as walls, rooms, doors and even open space. The debut feature of twenty year old Kane Parsons is an impressively unsettling movie to sit through, one that will make you think twice about roaming off on your own. Like last year’s Weapons it creates an edgy mood that makes the everyday terrifying.

 Some spoilers after the break

 

The film opens with a point of view footage of someone exploring the extensive rooms with which we will soon become familiar. The scratchy video film combined with a rising sense of panic and disorientation recalls The Blair Witch Project though in this case the surroundings are brightly lit. We soon cut to some more conventional filming as the main story unfolds.   It’s 1990 at middle aged Clark’s run down furniture store that already seems too large as he sells off the musty products all of which seem to have more of a 1970s look to them. The shop’s punning name Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire is at odds with the pirate theme its owner favours and even cosplays in promotional videos. Separated from his wife, harbouring pent up anger issues and sleeping on one of the beds in the shop, Clark is also seeing a therapist, Mary Kline who has her own unresolved childhood trauma. The flashbacks to these are odd too and it soon becomes apparent there is some sort of link between the two.

 One night Clark has trouble with the electrics which leads to him discovering what seems to be a porous portion of a wall through which he can step. On the other side he finds a seemingly endless layout of passageways, rooms and alcoves all lit in the pale yellow of both the lights and wallpaper. These are liminal spaces that theoretically lead to somewhere else yet they never seem to lend up anywhere but to more of the same. Most are empty, some have upturned furniture and increasingly bizarrely placed items.

During the film’s most effective section, Clarke becomes increasingly tense as his exploration gets him lost and he is hounded by unexpected creaking and footsteps. the narrative and keeps the audience hooked. Visually the film’s washed out palette and odd placing of objects calls back the likes of Dali while the rooms’ labyrinthine qualities call to mind Escher’s circularity notably an edge of the seat pursuit up a staircase which hangs over a seemingly endless drop.

Parsons brilliantly sets up a series of `incidents` which unnerve both the protagonist and the viewer. When Clark dragoons his two younger sceptical shop staff to help out, things become even more dangerous. Her curiosity piqued when she doesn’t hear from him, Mary then enters the same domain by which time matters are becoming even stranger.

The Backrooms concept began in 2019 on the website 4Chan as a series of images inspired by a 2002 photograph of a an empty furniture store in Wisconsin. Kane Parsons with a script by Will Soodik and exemplary cinematography from Jeremy Cox imagines what might be encountered in such a weird environment. It looks harmless, it looks ordinary yet just opening a door or turning a corner suddenly feels fraught with danger.

The results are a part psychological / part realistic horror with judicious use of found footage style video cam footage mixed with some stomach churning acrobatics and incidental music that rises and falls with an electronic interference. For the feint hearted there are some moments that genuinely disturb though for the most part what makes the film work is the fear of what might be there. There are multiple jump scares to be experienced though this is a film that shouldn’t be spoilered too much, the feeling that something just around the corner might provide answers is what drives it.

Caught like mice in a maze Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark and Renate Reinsve as Mary are both terrific conveying a cocktail of fascination, trepidation and fear as they are lured further and further in. These are subtle performances given the nature of the material. Time is taken to establish both of them as damaged individuals and the notion how much of what we see is real lingers in the air.

Towards the end I wouldn’t say we get all the answers but the tension of discovery is replaced by some vague explanations and a genuine physical threat though Parsons still manages to keep the eccentricity and originality right to the finish and when it’s over you will have questions. I don’t know the answers but I do feel a sequel would be a mistake. For me the less effective moments are when the narrative starts to slide towards an explanation- a lengthy dialogue scene near the end feels slightly out of place after what we’ve seen. It also supports the idea utilised so well earlier on that what you don’t see is often more effective than what you do see. 

Still, this film is a notable achievement both creatively and also financially; at time of writing it had made $213m at the box office on a $10m budget. That’s impressive for a first time director suggesting that we will be seeing more of what Kane Parsons can do in the coming years. Backrooms is a suspenseful and shocking film that wins by following its own rules. Personally, it will be a while before I go wandering around any backrooms…