BACKROOMS
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell
Director: Kane Parsons
ADRIANO
For the record, I don’t have any relationship with the source material, and I wonder if that played a part in me not understanding what my takeaway was supposed to be watching Backrooms. Debut director Kane Parsons does show his promise behind the camera, and the titular backrooms present fertile ground for atmospheric tension and an intriguing mythology. However, once the film begins to ground itself in a much more psychologically literal interpretation, it becomes clear that most of this is sequel fodder, which resulted in me feeling unsatisfied once the movie was over, despite what worked before.
NICK
Backrooms gets off to a hell of a start with an anxiety-inducing scene, shot entirely in first person. What follows never reaches that level of tension again. As the film transitions into the mysteries behind the backrooms, it hits a lull as it relies too heavily on atmosphere over well-developed storytelling. It reminded me of Channel Zero (also creepypasta based) except that show understood you needed to fill the holes of the lore to create a complete story. With Backrooms, you have a lot of unexplainable and unanswered questions that don’t quite work the same when translated to film. Having said that, I’m intrigued.
AMARÚ
You ever play Portal, where you’re dropped into seemingly endless levels of progressively more complicated rooms where you have to use a portal gun to escape? Well that’s all I thought of watching Backrooms, except you’re given the backstory of two characters, played excellently by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, who are despondent enough to understand why they’d do something as stupid as explore a magically demented alternate office space universe. Director Kane Parson’s ever-shifting perspectives, creepily slow pacing, and an equally dark score made this movie about memories interesting enough to leave me intrigued by the unanswered questions instead of annoyed.
KATIE
I find the liminal, claustrophobic spaces of the backrooms a deeply unnerving concept, so I expected to be thoroughly creeped out by the film. Although it looks fantastic, the set design and cinematography emphasise the limitless yet enclosed spaces, and the performances are great, I didn’t find it as unsettling or scary as I wanted to be. It struggled to pick a thread to focus on and offered too much insight into characters whom we never develop an emotional investment in, so I didn’t feel engaged by the dialogue. Nonetheless, I loved the disconcerting score, and the concept is compelling enough that I enjoyed it overall.
Want to hear even more of our thoughts? Nick and Adriano join Shak to take A Bigger Bite out of Backrooms HERE.