Backrooms
Who would have expected that the most successful film from A24 would emerge from a 4chan creepypasta?
Backrooms tells the story of Clark. He owns a not-so-successful furniture store and is a failed architect. One day, while investigating strange energy spikes in his shop, he discovers a mysterious door leading into what feels like another dimension — because through the wall you can step into an endless labyrinth of different rooms, where people have already been before, but something has attacked them. He shares his discovery with his therapist Mary Kline, and in an attempt to prove it’s real, he takes two of his employees with a camera and goes with them into the Backrooms, where they are attacked by an unknown creature and disappear. Mary Kline comes to the store to look for Clark and discovers the entrance to the Backrooms herself, where she begins searching for him. She finds him, but not in the way she would have hoped.
Overall, since this review comes out some time after the film’s world premieres, it can be said without hesitation that Backrooms is a triumph. It is a financial triumph for A24, a triumph for Kane Parsons, whose feature debut this is, and a triumph of a fresh story and a genuinely new source of inspiration — something that, of course, studios will probably manage to run into the ground over the next few years, but for now, we can simply enjoy what we have.
For a film with a budget of under 10 million dollars, it looks amazing. Its uncomfortable atmosphere, all these labyrinths and the strange things happening inside them — everything looks genuinely great. Even when there is a sense of unreality in some fictional elements, it works in the film’s favor, because we are inside a strange, parallel reality. Stylistically and visually, the sets and production design look excellent.
The film is also very good at building atmosphere. Backrooms is probably not “scary” in a traditional sense, but it creates a strong feeling of discomfort through its mood and presentation. While watching it, you periodically feel that cold sensation on your skin.
Story-wise, the film chooses to stay fairly open and vague. It doesn’t try to force conclusions, but instead leaves questions unanswered, allowing the viewer to interpret this other dimension in their own way. You can draw parallels — Clark as a wannabe architect getting swallowed by this labyrinth; the film as a story about trauma response, depression and different stages of it, about mentality and the strange power of the human mind, but also about how fragile and imperfect that mind can be. The film itself doesn’t impose these ideas, but invites you to build your own Backrooms in your head.
From an acting perspective, it all works very well. The main duo — Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve — do a great job and create a strong on-screen pair.
Overall, it’s a fairly fresh horror film that doesn’t necessarily impress purely on a screenplay level, but satisfies visually and feels like it opens a door to what might happen if new, interesting, young ideas are supported and given space to exist. Because sometimes you can get something like Backrooms, which is already the most successful film in A24’s history.
7/10
