Backrooms ~ Review

By: [email protected] on
The weird horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft generally follows a standard template. A neurotic bookish academic discovers a hidden reality lurking beneath his seemingly normal existence. That hidden reality typically involves a world with structures built with unusual geometry and the bizarre creatures that inhabit it. The nebbish then usually gets lost in his obsession and promptly goes insane.
 
Kane Parsons’ Backrooms is a modern update of a Lovecraftian cosmic horror story. Instead of dealing with Lovecraft’s racial anxieties, Backrooms is about the horrors of late-stage capitalism. The film is about a world and a culture slowly becoming a copy of a copy of a copy of itself. It’s ambitious; it doesn’t totally cohere, but it’s still worth your time.
 
It’s circa 1990, and Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is stuck in a rut. He’s a barely functioning alcoholic who pushes away his loved ones and friends. His prickly personality even alienates the employees of his failing furniture store, stoner Bobby (Finn Bennett) and assistant manager Kat (Lukita Maxwell). His therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), is trying to help Clark, but does he actually want help? One night, while sleeping and drinking at the store, Clark finds an invisible doorway to an enormous, strange space. It looks like an empty office, except it’s built in such a way that it would probably give Euclid a stroke. Nothing is a proper right angle, doors open to nowhere, and various everyday objects (shoes, tables, stop signs, storefronts) are either backwards, melting into the floor, or both. Clark loses himself to these “Backrooms,” but this is not a secret garden situation; these rooms are malevolent, and the creatures that live there aren’t friendly either.
 
Based on Parsons’ own web series of the same name, which was itself inspired by the creepy pasta “Backrooms” meme, born on the imageboard site 4chan and spread across the internet. The film is at its best when the characters are exploring the backrooms. We see their perspective through a video camera, which gives the film a creepy, unsettling momentum. And while I admire the themes of capitalism hollowing us out and consuming us from the inside, I find Parsons and Will Soodik’s script too thin in its characterization for those themes to truly land. In the middle of the film, the perspective switches from Clark to Mary, and the switch doesn’t totally work. These characters are trying to work through their various traumas, but we’re never given much to go on about what they want to be dealing with.
 
Much like the adaptations of Lovecraft’s work, it’s hard to sustain that creepy vibe for a feature-length film. Short stories and short films tend to work best for that, and that’s what made Parsons' shorts particularly effective. However, Backrooms has ambitions that movies with ten times its budget can barely manage. Which is astonishing considering this is Parsons’ feature debut, and it’s a particularly strong one at that. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
 
Three out of Four Stars