Backrooms

Backrooms is a mysterious horror/ sci-fi film where people find and explore what appears to be another dimension of interconnected backrooms that appear to be jumbled-messes of incoherent thought and ideas melded into a giant, never-ending maze.

It’s quite fascinating, even more so that is was conceptualized by a teenager, making his directorial debut at the ripened age of 19.  But Backrooms is that spectacle, an IP built in the past five years by Youtuber sensation Kane Parsons, who’s cult following propelled this Youtube IP to the number one film in the world.

It’s hard to distance the anticipation of this popular Youtube series being adapted into a feature film from standing by itself,  because Backrooms is solid indie horror-flick but definitely does not hit the heights of previous first time directors such as Zack Cregger’s Barbarian or recently with Curry Barker’s Obsession, but it does have more to say.

The film centers around Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner, with a slumping business and has recently been left by his wife and his therapist, Mary ( Renate Reinsve), who deals with her own trauma by helping others.

While staying overnight in his store Clark discovers there’s something strange happening in his lower level building.  A light, through the wall that opens to something unexplainable.  A new world, dimension, test experiment?  It’s not quite clear but what is clear is that it’s a calling to explore.  What is it, how it works and where it goes?  Does it have meaning, a human code to unravel?  What do all these rooms connected to rooms with partially thought-out furniture, desks, rooms all have in common? Questions are answered but more are left it it’s place.

It’s a mind-bender of a flick, mixing in some David Lynch homages, found footage usage and first person video games to concoct a very original and unique vision, exploring not only the surroundings of the backrooms but the human psychology and it’s suffering or ability to cope with it’s suffering.

The vision is drab, muted and eerily playful and although the characters heightened the dramas suspense the true star is now 20-year-old Parson’s craft and his ability to bring his niche Youtube sci-fi series to a local cineplex, introducing the older Millennial and Gen X generations to a new, younger wave of auteur directors.