BACKROOMS Review

Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a down on his luck furniture salesman in the Bay Area. His wife kicked him out and he currently lives inside of the furniture store. After a series of mysterious events, he stumbles upon the titular Backrooms, an unexplainable series of yellow rooms that appear to go on forever. He details this with his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), who meets him with some skepticism, but eventually decides to explore herself. What they find, to quote the film, is "like trying to describe a dog, to someone who has never seen a dog, and then asking them to draw it."

Backrooms as a concept originated from a 2019 thread on the image-board website 4chan. The most frequently explored example of "liminal space", they are an extra-dimensional set of rooms that seem to go on forever. The concept was expanded upon online relentlessly until 2022, when Kane Parsons aka Kane Pixels created his short film The Backrooms. Eventually turning this into a series, it became a viral sensation, and one of the most popular "creepypastas" on the internet. Fast forward a few years and A24 has given 20 year old Parsons $10 million and free rein to turn this entire concept into a feature length film.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is terrific. He fully submits into a pretty pitiful, unlikable guy but you still feel like you can resonate with him at times. He captures this sense of all hope is lost, at the perfect time to discover The Backrooms and decide he has nothing to lose. I also really thought Mark Duplass was a great addition to this, although maybe under-utilized, I really enjoyed seeing him pop up here. Renate Reinsve is truly on a generational tear right now. She is legitimately terrific here, in a type of role we haven't seen from her before. She attaches some previously explored traumas onto this character, and takes them into a whole different direction, and we really get to see a new side of her the longer this film goes on. The entire ensemble here is really a huge part of what makes this film work.

Jeremy Cox is a young cinematographer, who is starting to shoot more and more horror films, and he is a name to watch out for. The way that he captures Backrooms is really great, and we do get to touch on a little bit of the POV stuff from the original series.

This film lives and dies on its production design. I mean, it has ROOMS in the title for crying out loud. The entire appeal to this aesthetic, what makes it interesting, scary, etc, is the idea of "liminal space." This to me is the single most important part of the film, and it is pulled off masterfully. How exactly does the space feel so big and so small simultaneously? From a concept point its fascinating, from an execution point in the production design, its masterful. Not to mention the further in they get, when they find some particularly disturbing and out of the ordinary rooms. It's just so brilliant. In a just world, we would see Danny Vermette receive an Oscar nomination for best production design come January.

The pacing of this film is a bit odd. I think one thing that works so well is how slow it moves through the first two thirds, easing you in to introduce us to the real main character of this film, The Backrooms. It feels as though the final act may have been a bit rushed and it does feel a bit messy because of this. I've seen people complain that the film leaves them feeling empty, but I would argue that is the entire point.

What Parsons is able to accomplish here at 20 years old, is insanely impressive. The highs that this film hits are truly awe inspiring. What he has done with this concept is innovative, and constantly changing. What started was completely 3D software, giving him complete control to render the images however he wants on Blender. Now he is tasked to shoot with actors and a set, and he pulls it off.

There were moments where it felt as though you were witnessing an entirely new kind of filmmaking.

🍿 SCORE = 87 / 100