Unique, ambitious, and unsettling, Kane Parsons's downbeat but impactful horror movie Backrooms makes use of spooky "liminal spaces" to explore various themes including trauma, anxiety, identity, memory, and imagination.
Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a failed architect forced to work at a cheap furniture store. It's 1990. His wife has kicked him out of his house, so he's forced to sleep at the store at night. He sees a therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), who tries to help Clark identify negative patterns, or loops, in his behavior.
While investigating some unusual electricity fluctuations, he notices something strange about the wall in the basement. Just beyond is a series of strange rooms that seem to go on forever. Clark becomes obsessed with exploring and mapping the rooms, enlisting the help of his employees Kat (Lukita Maxwell) and Bobby (Finn Bennett). Unfortunately, they find a malevolent presence lurking within, which only makes Clark more eager to learn the secrets of the backrooms.
In 2022, YouTuber "Kane Pixels" — now credited as Kane Parsons — shocked the internet with the first of his short Backrooms horror movies, crafted to look like it was shot on handheld VHS video and set in an endless series of rooms haunted by mostly-unseen creatures.
Expanding Backrooms to feature length is a feat not without its growing pains; even though it's full of dialogue about psychology and memory, the characters remain a bit on the thin side. (Clark, despite Ejiofor's fine performance, is an especially bitter character.)
But what it lacks in emotional resonance, it more than makes up for in physical dread and food for thought. The rooms are colored a ghastly yellow and lit by soul-sucking overhead lighting, like the worst office building imaginable. There are crannies and partitions everywhere that could be hiding something. Random bits of furniture and other objects suggest the presence of humans, but also some kind of menace.
The further the characters explore, the more chance there is of getting lost and never getting out. But each room reveals something new, so it's hard to stop. Backrooms takes some mind-bending turns that perhaps go a little too far, and remind us of how effective the shorts were. This hits a little differently, but it's still an admirable and unforgettable chiller.
