Film review: Backrooms — From YouTube sensation to sensational thriller

Copyright A24

Much is, indeed, “unsettling” about Kane Parsons’s remarkable and mind-bending thriller. Not the least of which is, if you do a Google Image search you will find not only this small JPG, but many images with the title “The Backrooms”. Huh? Did the film have a different title before it was released? Or, is the strange world of Backrooms f-ing with our actual reality?

Wouldn’t you like to know…

Hollywood mining popular social media content

There is of course a recent trend of the movie industry taking popular YouTube series (in not so bygone days, it might have been a weird blog) and re-making/re-releasing them as full-length feature films. And top indie production house A24 seem to be better than anyone at doing this.

Following its original original start as a 4Chan thread, the film Backrooms did, indeed, start as a “found footage” YouTube series, and the studio did, also, indeed, allow its very young creator, Kane Parsons, to direct the neither low-budget nor expensive ($10MM) feature film, which, in this case, was a masterstroke.

Who would have known the material as well as Parsons? It is probable that he got a lot of help in key decisions along the way, including the decision to largely ditch the found footage metier — I for one am not a huge fan of the FF genre. I mean, yes, Cloverfield, but no, Paranormal Activity 15. Yes, The Blair Witch Project, but no…well, you get the point.

You leave the theater…

One common comment on reviews of this film has been that the viewer leaves the theater with a very queasy feeling in their gut after the final credits roll. That, in fact, happened to me. As I walked the hallways of the AMC complex here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I live. I actually thought as I looked down a yellow-colored (yes, yellow-colored) exit corridor that I might not actually make it out.

And yet I did (or did I?).

Such is the genius of both the original idea that Parsons had, and the top-notch execution in his film. Oscar-winner Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, the erstwhile owner of of a highly unsuccessful furniture store, who one day discovers that his store’s basement features a door to an Alternate Reality. Said Reality consisting of a series of interconnected “office style” hallways and rooms, mostly yellow in color, which contain either nothing, or some seemingly random assortment of furniture, or clothing, or a strange stand-up figure with a recorded loop of someone talking in some language that does not resemble English.

Crucially, there also seems to be a Threat of some kind, either some loud noise, or some animal sound that cause Clark to rightly want to get he f out of this weird liminal space.

And the plot thickens, or lengthens.

Clark is able to return to what I will call His Reality, and tells his skeptical therapist, Mary (played effectively by Renate Reinsve). Needless to say, she, in one of the films few cliche plot points, initially doesn’t believe Clark. As we will see, this matters little when, later in the film, she endeavors to find him. A decision that she may live to regret.

In the mean time, Clark enlists the somewhat willing help of his Assistant Manager, Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her baked boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) to try to return to the Backrooms and make heads or tails of just what is going on. And, of course, videotape (the film is set in the 70s) the proceedings. Which introduces a brief segue into Found Footage, again, but not long enough to sink the film, IMHO.

So, yes, in Horror films the heroes usually make a critical error in running toward the danger, rather than away. What was that about curiosity killing the Kat?

It seems foolish, having already once journeyed into the the strange back rooms of Backrooms that Clark and his crew would want to return. Alas, they do, and it does not go well for them.

Paging Doctor Skeptic, Doctor Skeptic please pick up.

Without spoiling this section of the film, Dr. Mary becomes concerned when she doesn’t hear from Clark, and ends up, eventually, going through the same portal to Hell, or whatever it is, her curiosity about the back rooms perhaps even greater than her desire to find her patient. Or, indeed, maybe live.

Of course.

With a twisted-reality Horror premise like Backrooms, the viewer most wants, or expects, that there will be an explanation at some point. Brilliantly, it is not a spoiler to say that the film never really answers the question of what the F is going in its strange Yellow-toned world.

After being chased by a Spike Jonez style apparition, Doctor Mary appears to escape the back rooms (or does she?) and ends up in an interrogation room that appears to have a window to the normal outside world (or is it?). She is talking with Phil, played by Mark Duplass. We think we will finally get an Answer to What is Going On. But the ending of Backrooms will not explain what the Backrooms are, as is made clear by the fact that Phil had appeared earlier in the story, watching a 70s era television, which has a kitschy commercial for Clark’s furniture store. And Mary, herself, has a whole backstory that links her to the world of the back rooms in ways we will never really understand.

A word about Production Design

While story, direction, acting and music in Backrooms all contribute well to create its chilling effect, the film craft which threatens to steal the show here is Danny Vermette’s Production Design. It is hard to believe that all of the elaborate hallways and rooms — some with objects, or even people, seemingly half-buried in their yellow floors and walls — were bespoke constructed for the film. Especially one particularly harrowing scene I won’t spoil, but sufficed to say if you are acrophobic, hold on to your seat cushions. I know I did.

I kept looking for the slightly lower-res giveaways that they were using CGI, but I just didn’t see it. Besides a couple of well known actors, most of the money to make Backrooms must have gone to creating these amazing sets.

Or perhaps they tapped into a real world of back rooms, and just filmed it.

Wouldn’t you like to know?

Currently in theaters across the US.