It was very strange seeing the Backrooms on the big screen. The expansion of Kane Parson’s YouTube series delivers on the surrealism of the infinite corridors and the horrors that lie just beyond. This cinematic take is promptly grounded in the larger world that fans will quickly recognize, without confusing newcomers.
Centering our story are Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve as Clark and Mary. Ejiofor’s Clark is disgruntled with a chip on his shoulder. We find him at a rough patch that will no doubt play a part in the discovery of the lower level of his failing furniture store. Mary is his therapist, with her own baggage sprinkled throughout and shaping her worldview. We’re given just enough information to warrant emotional investment in the characters, even if it’s bare bones.
Set in the Summer of 1990, the story focuses on Clark’s furniture store, the site of strange blackouts. Keep in mind, he’s living at this store, so he’d really be inclined to notice it. One night, he notices a sliver that anyone could miss: an entrance to the Backrooms. The initial opening exploration is as good as you’d expect it to be. The production design presents a haunting location, a character in itself, really. Building an actual labyrinth made for every noise and just-out-of-sight motion made that much more isolating, strange, and otherworldly. Seeing the backrooms themselves, while maintaining that sense of curiosity that could give way to something stranger as Clark explores, kept my eyes glued to the screen.
Whether it was viewed through a camera, as a standout scene, explored for its depths, or as characters surveying the space, the unease doesn’t let you go. Clark gets his two coworkers in on the “research” of his discovery, not wasting any time on ruining the almost ignorant approach to the unexplored and unexplainable.
The found-footage portion overwhelmed me with its breakneck pacing, strangeness, and the surprises Parson hides. There’s a chase sequence or two that tosses you into the deep end of the fears that would be ever prevalent in an infinite memory room chamber. It was a bone-chilling, can’t-look-away moment and stood out even among the unsettling moments of the YouTube series. The horror portion of this science fiction film doesn’t disappoint, and I wouldn’t have been mad at twenty more minutes of being lost in the yellow wallpaper.
It felt harrowing to watch Clark and Mary turn corners into something mundane or entirely new. Comparisons to Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity will be easy to make. Still, Parsons and Will Soodik’s script connects the eerie unknown to his two characters’ emotional states, giving Ejiofor a performance worth grinning at. As the characters speak at length, the film’s emotional underbelly shrinks, keeping things very simple. Even with the film holding the characters at arm’s length, only giving them one major issue and sticking to everything surrounding it, they still deliver performances that connect with their discovery and exploration of the backrooms.
Backrooms maintains the allure and confusion that has made the initial series such a comforting and frightening series to look at. This propels it into a digestible, interesting sandbox ripe for further exploration. Parsons shows strong confidence and self-restraint in his feature-length directorial debut, which makes the subject matter all the stranger and more startling as a story.
Check out the trailer for A24’s Backrooms below:
