Review: Backrooms

Image courtesy of A24.

Director Kane Parsons first created the concept for "Backrooms" in a series of creepypasta YouTube videos in his teens and, at age 20, has graduated to feature film making. "Backrooms" is a startling and unsettling horror movie that has one of the most imaginative set designs of any film of recent memory. 

At several points in the picture, characters try to describe the strange world in which it is mostly set by presenting the scenario in which someone describes a dog to someone and then asks them to draw it. While the person might get the basics right in their rendering, the details would be off - and possibly in an unsettling way.

This is an apt description of the world discovered in the basement of a furniture store operated by Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a once-aspiring and divorced architect who is stuck working as a store manager and has rage issues. Utilizing the concept of liminal space, the yellow lair he discovers looks like a long and winding empty office space but, much like a completely empty shopping mall, there's something unnatural and disturbing about it.

"Backrooms" is set to have a massive opening weekend for a low-budget horror movie, which is surprising considering how uncommercial it often feels. Relying less on jump scares or other familiar horror tropes, it instead builds tension through mood and atmosphere, ingenious set design, and surreal touches. 

It's the type of film that doesn't necessarily need to be understood - or even completely make sense - to be enjoyed. It often feels like the type of murky nightmare from which one awakens but can't quite explain or completely recall. Submitting to its dream-like state and accepting its rules are integral to getting oneself onto its wavelength.

It also helps that it is powered by solid performances by two great actors - Ejiofor as the store manager who discovers the netherworld on the other side of the wall in his store, and Renate Reinsve (of "Sentimental Value" and "The Worst Person in the World") as Mary, a psychiatrist who is taken aback by Clark's behavior (he's her patient) and tries to track him down when he disappears, leading her to his store. Mary has her own disturbing history that involves a mother with serious mental health issues, although this is thankfully not spelled out to an unnecessary degree.

There are some truly frightening moments in the film - one involving characters entering the world with a rope tying them together and another at the film's beginning in which a researcher of some sort is filming his walk through the netherworld. There are also some completely spellbinding moments, especially when Mary flees an attacker and ends up on a ledge that overlooks the entirety of the world's various floors as they lead down to the depths.

Not surprisingly, there are a few signs here of a novice filmmaker's first outing - namely that rather than allowing the audience to fill in its own explanation, the film ends with a scene in which a character played by Mark Duplass provides a little more explanation than we probably needed about elements of the world. Also, while Reinsve is very good, her character's past is given precedence over who she is in the present to the extent that we don't exactly understand Mary's motivations. 

Regardless, "Backrooms" is yet another in a recent batch of very good horror movies that includes "Weapons," "Sinners," "The Substance," the two recent "28 Years Later" films, "Oddity," and "Hokum." It's an unsettling and mysterious film that features some genius set design, strong performances, and what is hopefully the beginning of a promising career for its young director.