Backrooms

In the last decade, the term “liminal horror” popped into existence as if it had always been there, sitting quietly in an empty hallway under fluorescent lights as generic jazzy sounds (like the music loop you hear when waiting on hold) play through an old PA system to nobody, waiting impassively for its moment. A lot of this content originated on YouTube, and perhaps the most famous version of it was Backrooms, of which Kane Parsons created the most popular iteration. He’s now got a real budget and famous Hollywood actors and directed a film concerning the same subject (with the same title) and the question is: Is it any good? Oh, yes, it very much is.

Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) owns a failing furniture store and is reeling from a recent divorce and his own problems with alcohol. He’s been seeing therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) to help him work through his feelings, but in general he’s doing poorly, reduced to living in his store. One evening he follows some flickering lights into the basement and notices a glowing seam in one of the walls. He discovers he can walk through it into an entirely different space – a seemingly endless set of hallways and odd rooms. He decides to explore this phenomenon with the aid of his employees but then finds, to his regret, that the space isn’t as unoccupied as he thought.

Ejiofor gives a strong, layered performance as Clark, who perhaps suffers a bit from denial and a lack of self-knowledge. He captures the character’s frustration well, but also the fact that he’s already lost in his life, which maybe facilitates his entry into the Backrooms. Reinsve is quietly terrific as Mary, trying to help her seemingly delusional patient calmly until she unintentionally steps into a nightmare. It’s refreshing that the two leads in this film are Academy Award-nominated actors, and they both bring their “A game” to this material.

Parsons, who is twenty years old, directs this film with impressive assurance. He accomplishes the first goal of the movie being true to its YouTube roots and successfully expanding it into a feature without seeming Hollywood-ized. It’s still the Backrooms we know and love, but with a bigger budget for the weirdness (looking at you, Christmas tree and pool rooms). This one has an actual story with three-dimensional characters, and Parsons gets strong performances from his cast. And when things are meant to get actively scary, he’s able to deliver – I found the final third of this film to be quite unnerving.
Will Soodik’s script serves both as a continuation of the preexisting concept and an effective introduction for newcomers to the Backrooms, a creepy and seemingly corporate space that changes its contents depending on who enters into it. It’s a clever touch that the lives of the two lead characters are empty enough (Clark’s store never has a customer) that they might as well be in the Backrooms before they even find it. It feels as if Samuel Beckett had chosen to write horror, except that when Godot shows up, he’s terrifying.

Backrooms is already a big commercial success, and it deserves its accolades. This film is something special, and I’d recommend it even to non-horror fans who appreciate surreal, arty visions.