In Backrooms, failed architect turned unsuccessful furniture salesman Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) stumbles into an alternate world consisting of liminal spaces and misremembered objects and places. Fascinated, he spends the following weeks mapping out and exploring this alternate world.. When Mary (Renate Reinsve), Clark’s therapist, receives a concerning voicemail, she decides to search for him, inadvertently finding herself trapped in The Backrooms. Unfortunately for both Clark and Maria, there is much more to fear in The Backrooms than just getting lost.
Backrooms is directed by twenty-year-old Kane Parsons, adapted from his YouTube series, which itself is based on the Backrooms Creepypasta. His directing is superb and feels immediate, youthful, experimental, daring, and fresh. The screenplay was penned by forty-five-year-old Will Soodik, and is superb as well. It’s very rich, thoughtful, and Jungian. Our characters are fully fleshed out and three-dimensional as well.
Jeremy Cox handles cinematography, and Greg Ng is in charge of editing. Both do excellent jobs. The cinematography can be dizzying at times and always excels at disorienting the viewer. Backrooms is mostly shot traditionally, but there are refreshing portions that rely on found footage or shaky cam. These portions work better than most recent found-footage films.
Danny Vermette is production designer for Backrooms and does phenomenal work. Backrooms’ locations are incredibly uncanny, liminal, and unsettling, and the 90s aesthetics are accurate and nostalgia-inducing. This is definitely one place you would not want to be trapped in. The score is composed by Kane Parsons and Edo Van Breeman. It’s striking, strong, and very synth-y, adding tension and unease to the proceedings throughout.
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve both turn in compelling and engaging performances. Ejiofor knows how to switch between nuance and extremity. His role requires a lot from him and he delivers. Reinsve, on the other hand, is more subdued and quiet throughout. That said, she portrays terror exceptionally well.
Unfortunately, Backrooms doesn’t give Lukita Maxwell or Finn Bennett much opportunity to shine. Mark Duplass fares better as Phil, an Async employee tasked with exploring and documenting the Backrooms. Duplass is sprinkled in sporadically throughout the proceedings. He takes a nothing character and makes him interesting and memorable.
Backrooms doesn’t rely on jump scares to frighten its audience. It chooses to instead drop them into a world of tension and unease and forces them to stew in it. It is filled with heady concepts that it wants audiences to ponder. Fans of psychology and Jung might find themselves pleasantly surprised with the proceedings.
Backrooms has so much going for it, so where does it go wrong? Unfortunately, the film chooses to constrain itself to less than an hour and forty-five minutes of run time. This means character arcs are rushed, weeks to months are skipped over, and the interior workings and psyches of our leads could have been more fully explored. An extra twenty minutes or more would have given this almost-masterpiece and its characters more room to breathe. Another potentially polarizing element is this: The lore from the Backrooms Creepypasta remains intact, but Parsons makes a choice that might anger some die-hards regarding whether or not an entity lurks within. Luckily you don’t need to be familiar with said lore to enjoy this film.
While there could have been more to Backrooms, what we’re given is still very strong, and works mostly exceptionally well on its own. There is so much to Backrooms that this movie could easily spawn an entire franchise, with new characters populating each additional entry. This first entry works as a sturdy, strong foundation for future films. Only a fraction of The Backrooms is explored here, and you can only imagine what more there is to see in this terrifying alternate world.
Backrooms is a very strong outing for first-time director Kane Parsons. It’s the kind of film only a twenty-year-old could make, and I mean that in the best way possible. It’s heady horror that wants audiences to engage with its many ideas. It plays like an episode of the Twilight Zone mixed with House of Leaves. What’s here is very satisfying, but I want more and eagerly look forward to future installments.
4.5 STARS