Backrooms – Review

Cert – 15, Run-time – 1 hour 50 minutes, Director – Kane Parsons

After falling through a wall in his furniture store, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) explores an endless maze of almost empty office-like rooms, bringing more people in as the few unexplained contents, and creatures, start to attack.

YouTube channel Kane Pixels’ viral series The Backrooms played into the internet’s fascination with liminal spaces. An extending space, quiet in content and atmosphere which captures a sense of calmness, yet unease growing behind you; as if anything could creep out from around a corner and lurch its way towards you as you’re stuck in the static of the often dim, grainy image. In feature form, the director and story creator, credited under real name Kane Parsons, strides with the most confidence of the extended scenes roaming around the extensive series of almost empty office-like rooms.

Having fallen through a wall in the basement of his struggling furniture store, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), explores the never-ending titular space with fascination and perplexity. Signs and sofas similar to those in his store appear to glitch through the floor and ceiling, there’s a feeling that the backrooms are alive, trying to copy the world on the other side, and eventually itself. It’s mentioned that its behaviour is like trying to draw a picture of a dog having only had someone describe one to you, another comparison would be to the off-kilter confused repetition of AI.

Parsons leans into the psychological both narratively, with screenplay written by Will Soodik, and stylistically. Diving into a world that seems so familiar but doesn’t make any sense. Haunting and unsettling, with an equally uneasy score by himself and Edo Van Breeman. It starts to leak into the real-world scenes, an emptiness and feeling of repetition to the streets and houses we see, think 2019’s trippy entrapment horror Vivarium. Mocked by the set-up of the various stages of the Backrooms themselves. It’s a point brought up in the unfolding narrative, largely in the final stages after Clark has dragged more people (including his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve) into the Backrooms, often confronting the suspenseful creatures shrouded in shadows yet still striking plenty of fear.

The wrap-up may not prove satisfying to everyone, especially with how brief it might seem, although it certainly sticks in the mind afterwards and when reflecting there’s a good deal going on thematically beyond the style and upfront horror at hand. Making the most of uncertainty in the wake of what should be familiar – wonderfully captured by both Reinsve and Ejiofor. The feeling that there’s something lurking around the corner, or in the centre of the frame – one of the first incidents in a dark, angle-shifting room seems to show a head (real or mannequin) buried amongst a pile of clothing. Parsons excels in these moments, letting the environment speak for itself and play with the audiences’ minds at the same time. Pushing our quiet, unsettled interested in liminal spaces by expanding them in the same endless maze of rooms.

Experiment or not, Backrooms is at its most unsettling when pushing through the off-kilter liminal spaces of the titular world. Perhaps thematically strongest afterwards, the ending might divide, but there’s plenty of successful fear and suspense beforehand in a living world of confused repetition and possible monsters.