Written by Ryan Dailey
This reviewer approached The Backrooms with a bit of trepidation. It is no secret that I believe in my heart of hearts that independent creators found on 4-Chan, Youtube, et cetera, is the place to go to see how good horror can be when there is no meddling from shady hollywood types dipping their fingers into pies that they know they don’t like the flavor of, nor do they understand.
However , there are examples of these genuinely good Creepypastas that have been bastardized by the Hollyweird machine, Slenderman being the most well-known of them all.
The Backrooms play on people’s discomfort of liminal spaces. Liminal spaces, for those not in the know, refers to areas that are abandoned, familiar, yet uncanny. If you have ever been to a school dance on a dreary fall evening, you know what it is. Hallways that are poorly lit and empty, having been full of chattering students and the hustle and bustle of moving from class to class just mere hours beforehand. The Backrooms as a location serves as a place that people find themselves in when they “clip” out of reality. “Clipping” is a term used in video gaming to describe what happens when the player glitches off the world map and finds them falling through an uncanny version of the once familiar game map.
The protagonist is absolutely a trope of every working class horror movie protagonist. He is the manager of a furniture store in 1990’s era California, a furniture store with no customers and the typical cheesy company mascot. The man, Clark, (Chiwetal Ejiofor) is sleeping in his office, drinking himself into a stupor on a regular basis.
Clark religiously unloads on his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline,(Renate Reinsve). He has the obligatory ex-wife that he complains about, he blames everyone but himself for his less than perfect lot in life, all the cliches that one can think of in this scenario. This plays into one of my only complaints about the film and that is that the material really does not need this deep of a setup, let alone his backstory being such a copy/paste lore.
Clark finds himself in the titular Backrooms when he clips through the basement wall of the furniture store. Clark is initially excited about his findings, bringing in fellow employee Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and her significant other, Bobby (Finn Bennett) to document his findings for posterity. The filmmakers manage to produce some great POV shots, full of subtle and not so subtle visual clues to the Backrooms, which culminates with a genuinely nail-biting chase scene.
To this reviewer’s surprise, the film is thankfully lacking idle chatter and cringe inducing dialog. The Backrooms has taken cues from Skinamarink, relying more so on ambient noise and visuals to deliver the scares. The last half of an hour of the film leaves the audience uncomfortable and confused, but in a great Eraserhead fashion.
All of the minor gripes aside, The Backrooms is an amazing entry to the horror genre, harkening back to the glory days of David Lynch. If you enjoyed this film, by all means check out Kane Parsons’ YouTube channel for more lore.
Solid 4 out of 5.
The Backrooms is playing in theaters as of the time of this writing.