Review: Backrooms

Directed by: Kane Parsons

Written by: Will Soodik

Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell

Rating: [3/5]

Even the most mundane elements of life can contain a certain degree of horror. An empty room, a blank look, pieces of furniture just sitting around, and anything else one can possibly think of. It all ultimately comes down to what it represents and, more importantly, the impact it has on the individual, which very much aligns with what we witness in Backrooms. A film filled with enough eeriness to fill a pool, yet one that could have relied more on its opaqueness. 

Battling with alcoholism and making his living owning a struggling furniture store, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) one night finds a strange opening in the basement to a never-ending labyrinth of rooms. As he continues to explore what inhabits this area and what it leads to, he involves his therapist in the attempt to find meaning in it. 

In trying to summarize the feeling of watching Backrooms, “unnerving“ immediately comes to mind. Even prior to our descent into the backrooms itself, an ever-present sense of uneasiness covers every conversation and action as we follow Clark and Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) through this strange experience. Things only get stranger as we progress, leading into an experience filled with mystery, leaving plenty of room for interpretation. 

Clark discovers this area through happenstance, drawn to it because of recent electrical anomalies turning the lights in the furniture store on and off with no rhyme or reason. As we enter this space, it falls right in line with the aesthetic of a third-rate furniture store. The type that never has customers other than when you enter and the salesperson looks at you as if it’s their first time encountering another human being in a long time. Room after room with beige walls, fluorescent lighting, and odd assortments of furniture. Oddities fill each room, removing any semblance of normalcy other than the mundanity mixed with an emptiness that maintains this eeriness. The production design on display astounds and does so much of the heavy lifting throughout this film to further draw us into this completely strange and disconcerting experience. 

This concept alone works well, only made more terrifying by some entity lurking around wreaking havoc for anyone who comes across it. This exists as the promise of what Backrooms sought to deliver, and it did. However, when director Kane Parsons tries to infuse this overall concept he created with the narrative involving our two lead characters, it loses steam, where a need to explain proves inevitable. A need that gets handled inadequately, leaving more questions than necessary, further driving us away from the larger point of these backrooms. The most intriguing element of these rooms works best in its mystery and opacity. When an objective and scientific component begins to enter the narrative, the filmmaker falls into losing what makes the entire concept so captivating. 

While the narrative itself serves as the film’s weakest point, it still has value in presenting the horrors of this space, particularly the journey of Clark, portrayed brilliantly by Chiwetel Ejiofor. Ever since his incredible work many years ago in 12 Years a Slave, he has struggled to find roles where he can truly shine, but he puts on something special here as Clark. His vulnerability and struggle to maintain some semblance of sanity do wonders as he continues to traverse through all of these rooms. From the filming of a silly commercial to acting out one of the most painful moments of his life, Clark as a character creates a fertile feeding ground for an actor of the caliber of Ejiofor to devour, and he did not miss the opportunity. 

For all of its greatness and faults, Backrooms sits right at the center for me. A very promising debut by such a young filmmaker in Kane Parsons, as he gets the opportunity any up-and-coming filmmaker would dream of. He makes a web series of a concept so intriguing he gets the opportunity to flesh it out into a feature film. While it does not fully work in its totality, there still remains so much to appreciate with this film that demonstrates we have a real talent on our hands who will only continue to improve and bring us other concepts to wrestle with.