by Eric Lindbom
Good luck bifurcating BACKROOMS (in theaters) from its already social media-able back story. I won’t try here.
At age 16, Kane Parsons created the YouTube series THE BACKROOMS (FOUND FOOTAGE). It followed a camera man, and therefore the audience, through an eerily expanding and endless labyrinth of rooms and hallways all seared under harsh fluorescent lights. Parsons was inspired by the internet trend of liminal space videos, which bring emptiness to typically hectic locales. He concocted his own addictive and inexplicable series and ultimately nabbed 197 million views over time. Those eyeballs could not be ignored.
er and by age twenty he directed the theatrical version. The result? An organic, youth-based box office sonic boom as loud as EASY RIDER or Barbenheimer. An 81 million domestic opening weekend had Hollywood observers’ heads spinning like Linda Blair in THE EXORCIST especially after another precocious, bullseye original horror flick OBSESSION, from comedy sketch creator Curry Barker, brought a one-two zeitgeist punch. Suddenly, YouTube creators vs. film school or graphic novelists seem like the next flavor of auteur horror talent.
Some of you admired and/or endured the non-narrative puzzler SKINARINK. That said, even audiences accepting experimental approaches crave a story. Luckily, BACKROOMS has a shrewd plotline constructed by screenwriters Robert Patino and credited Will Soodik (both wrote for HBO’s WESTWORLD) and iconic horror director James Wan that is designed to maximize Parsons’ aesthetic without mufflling its DNA.
Downtrodden Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), whose dreams of being an architect didn’t add up, is stuck running a tacky, unpopular furniture store with no customers and two bored teen employees. He sees a therapist and successful self-help author (Renate Reinsve) who wants him to deal with his friendless isolation and anger issues over his off-screen wife who left him after he bankrolled her law school education. Strange power outages at the store frustrate Clark (who sometimes amusingly sleeps in-store on one of its beds). In the basement, Clark leans against a wall and passes through it, emerging in the backrooms world of endless corridors and rooms. After several explorations, one with his scared workers, he vanishes. Mary follows his bread crumb trail and enters the backroom world alone, a decision she’ll deeply regret.
Facile comparisons abound between action films and theme park attractions based on their supposed mutual thrill components. The analogy is stickier with BACKROOMS, a spook house car we’re riding in. We follow Clark as he snakes through corridors of different shapes and sizes (unlike the purposefully identical hallways in SEVERANCE which created their own sense of sterile dread). Besides recreating our childhood fears of being alone and lost, spaces are shot at madcap angles. Many rooms have globs of dirty clothes and junk piles of furniture inventory as if the space is plumbing his mind and badly replicating his life through the prism of a demon 3-D printer. Crackling electrical noises and jarring audio comes courtesy of supple go-to horror sound designer Eugenio Battaglia (HERETIC, THE MONKEY, KEEPER).
Another MVP is casting director Wittney Horton. Rather than inevitably casting attractive, quippy Gen Z-ers, BACKROOMS has an adult cast. Ejiofor, who masterfully displayed internalized anger as the captive main character in 12 YEARS A SLAVE, gives Clark rooting interest as a sad but sensible soul driven over the edge. Reinsve, fresh off her revelatory work in SENTIMENTAL VALUE, isn’t slumming here. Her transition from soothing shrink to terrified believer brings gravitas. Those fearful that BACKROOMS will trail off into ambiguous ellipses can rest assured there is a satisfying, shocking finale all the more effective through the cumulative build.
Any film arriving on a wave of hype will raise the antennae of skeptics. This isn’t a PSA but If you didn’t spark to the household minutiae of the found footage PARANORMAL ACTIVITY series, this may not be your cup of meat. Ditto if you are a budding screenwriter clocking plot points.
BACKROOMS is experiential, so it’s ride or die (of dismay). As pure cinema, it’s reminiscent of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT another game changer that if first encountered at home years later may underwhelm. Similarly, BACKROOMS needs to be seen in a theater though you needn’t sit as we accidentally did in 4DX seats that rolled and jerked us around in full William Castle style (though the strobe lights and blasts of air were cool). Obviously, in our convenience-first world, it’s possible to take a laptop tour of some of the great museums of the world or attend a live music event via the web from the couch to escape the traffic hassles and high drink prices. But unless incapacitated or financially strapped, why would you? The movie of the hour poses the same question.
