Backrooms review – Prime real estate

Everyone has experienced a liminal space at some point. An empty corridor at an airport, a dimly-lit street at nighttime, or a school playground obscured by fog. It’s a location that, by all descriptions, is unremarkable yet invokes a strong sense of unease.

New film Backrooms is full of unease, but it’s far from being unremarkable. Adapted from a web series of short videos, helmed by said videos’ creator, and distributed by A24, this horror outing successfully delivers on both style and substance. Though the serving portion slightly skews more towards style, it nonetheless succeeds thanks to a spellbinding premise about what happens when you ‘noclip’ and find yourself in reality’s backlot.

The film follows Clark (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a down-on-his-luck furniture store owner who attends regular sessions with his therapist, Dr Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve). One night, upon investigating an electrical issue in his shop’s basement, Clark stumbles through a literal (yet metaphorical) hole in the wall to discover an endless series of rooms, occupied by random objects and vacant of any people.

Curious to explore, Clark enlists the help of his assistant manager Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett). But the backrooms quickly prove to be a very unsafe space, and soon Mary finds herself venturing in as well, discovering what happens when the places you remember start to forget themselves.

Backrooms continues the trend of YouTubers and content creators spearheading theatrical projects to great success (see Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks, Markiplier’s Iron Lung, and, most recently, Curry Barker’s Obsession). Backrooms marks the feature film directorial debut of Kane Parsons who, over the past few years, has produced a series of online shorts about the subject, and ended up with an extended universe’s worth of storytelling.

This should not be a turn-off for film viewers as Backrooms stands confidently as its own outing. No need to catch up on the videos to know what’s happening, but longtime fans should be satisfied with the film expanding on existing lore (Author’s Note: Upon the credits rolling, I was privy to a young man behind me saying to his friends, “This changes everything”).

Critically, Backrooms the film is also an actual film. Parsons could very easily have made an extended YouTube video by deploying tactics such as a found footage perspective and obscure detailing. However, what he delivers with the help of cinematographer Jeremy Cox is nothing short of beautiful.

The backrooms are manifested in full visceral glory, invoking strong feelings of familiarity without being tied to a specific moment in time or place. The movie itself summons associations with many other creative works: everything from feature films like The Shining and Skinamarink, plus TV shows like Twin Peaks and Severance, to video games like Superliminal and Remedy Entertainment’s Control. The result is something that stands out, but cannot be uniquely characterised.

This works to a certain point, as Backrooms sometimes comes across as indulgent with the amount of time it lingers on specific frames and deploys character narration at the start of each act. Both Ejiofor’s Clark and Reinsve’s Mary are not that compelling, but they are functional, and they do the job of embodying the backrooms with a reason for being. Parsons leans on what he does best and lets the visuals and audio lead the execution, even having composed the film’s score with Canadian musician Edo van Breeman. That execution also sets a high standard for the genre.

Again, with a premise like this, Parsons and writer Will Soodik could have just made a movie full of jump scares, relying on and repeating the trope of something grotesque waiting at the end of long, dark corridors. They don’t.

Backrooms is also a horror movie free of bad decision-making (besides Clark’s very bad idea to explore rooms that have unexplainable architecture and are flooded with the sound of fluorescent lighting) and a resolution that aligns with its character work. Building nearly 3,000 square meters worth of sets, instead of relying on CGI, also pays off as the film features some truly impressive action sequences, all of which do an excellent job of illustrating the terrifying implications of this world.

Backrooms deserves maximum credit for what it sets out to achieve… and ultimately actually accomplishes. It’s a horror outing less interested in scaring you and more concerned about getting under your skin – prompting you to wonder what may lurk under the veneer of our familiar everyday. As a movie experience, unlike with the liminal spaces that inspired it, you’ll want to hang around and see more of it.

Backrooms is in cinemas now, having debuted on 29 May.