20-year-old wunderkind Kane Parsons adapts his viral, unnerving YouTube clips for the big screen in this claustrophobic journey through the liminal spaces known as “backrooms”. When a down-on-his-luck furniture store owner (Chiwetel Ejiofor) discovers a seemingly never-ending portal of eerie, empty yellow-walled rooms, his therapist (Renate Reinsve) steps in to find him into the unknown.
An amusement park ride from corporate hell. Whether you’ve been acquainted with “Backrooms” lore through YouTube uploads, Creepypasta threads, or 4chan forums, or whether all of that sounds foreign to you, it doesn’t really matter to enjoy this dizzingly brilliant, unnerving, and creatively mythological A24 horror. With a sprawling world of corporate rot and silent minimalism to his disposal, Parson prioritizes the fear of the unknown over generic in-your-face creepy crawlies. Does such atmospheric vision lead to slow-burning tension? Not particularly, as the buzzing white noise of the tubelights and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s panicky responses are enough for you to lean forward in your seat and strap in for a simulation with no clear beginning or end. Translating the YouTube experience onto a bigger screen still doesn’t remove the source material’s brooding sense of confinement. And that’s a good thing. Whether these so-called “liminal” spaces grow or shrink with the wide-eyed Clark’s every move, every mental choice towards interpretation can almost seem uncertain. Almost like you yourself are hallucinating office-space mirages from the POV of the ill-fated protagonist. Production designer Danny Vermette’s fluorescent-lit mazes can build fear out of literal nothingness, but this abyss isn’t free from fuzzy, distorted visions either. A particularly ghastly vision of Clark’s furniture store mascot and a toe-curling dinner sequence are bound to be ranked among the most creatively terrifying scenes in contemporary horror cinema. But beyond the shock and awe, does the psychological thriller ever get burdened with its open-ended, multi-interpretational lore? That’s where the film’s true litmus test might lie once the conversation has died out around both the film’s YouTube-to-A24 journey and its impressively young director.
The deliberate ominousness behind the “backrooms” can feel frustrating, even if you can’t help but marvel at Parsons’s dystopian mindscapes. While the immersive infinity of the backrooms themselves overshadows the film’s limited cast, Ejiofor is fired up on all fronts in his most intense performance since 12 Years a Slave. Sentimental Value’s Renate Reinsve, though, might come across as a slightly formulaic horror stand-in for any genre actress (complete with a traumatic backstory involving a parent that she must later overcome). But where Parsons’s film really struggles to find a middle ground is its final act, as it crams in a multitude of backstories and possibilities with a shocking (if not abrupt) sweep of the rug under your feet. By the time you find your footing and try to make any sense, the lights are already off. What remains is the nerve-tingling white noise of the abandoned industrial purgatory. Then again, a film born out of an online thread speculating uncomfortable spaces is bound to be more endless than your average horror fare. Maybe, online theories and possible sequels would eventually smooth out the road ahead. But for now, it’s clear that whether or not you enjoyed Backrooms, we aren’t getting a distinctly assured and singular genre debut like this in ages.
A nauseatingly brilliant fever dream of a debut by Kane Parsons. While some narrative twists might pull the rug out from under your feet a bit too abruptly, this overall journey through a corporate, yellow-walled, damp-stained hellscape makes for a terrifyingly unique viewing experience.
