‘I found a place…’
Every few years, something comes along in horror that completely changes the game. The Exorcist in 1973 followed by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre a year later, Halloween in 1978, Sam Raimi and The Evil Dead in 1981, A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, Scream in 1996, The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense in 1999… you get the idea. These are films that changed the course of cinematic history (for better or worse), and that have defined the horror genre over the last six decades. And now… we have Backrooms. Let’s dive in…
Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofo), owner of the struggling pirate-themed furniture store, Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, stumbles across a portal into a mysterious liminal space which appears to be a series of endless rooms which provide a nightmarish facsimile of a real place without ever threatening to intersect with reality as we know it. Dr Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), Clark’s therapist, follows Clark into the eponymous Backrooms with disastrous consequences.
Much has been made of writer/director Kane Parsons’ tender age (he’s just about to turn 21 at time of writing), but we must remember that he comes from a generation who have grown up filming and editing content across various social media platforms. It is this that has driven the new generation of DIY horror filmmakers that I wrote about in my review of Curry Barker’s Obsession. The two films will forever be tied together in the public consciousness now due to both of them topping the box office simultaneously, but while Obsession is a fairly familiar story driven by an incredible lead performance and a talented auteur behind the camera, Backrooms is a film in which the cast, great as they are, exist to service the narrative and the aesthetic of the filmmaker and nothing else. Honestly? While Obsession probably doesn’t work without Inde Navarrette, you could swap out Ejiofo and Reinsve here with any number of performers and still have the same result. Which brings me to the set design…
We have seen a very welcome upsurge in practical effects in recent times, particularly in horror cinema, and this is never more apparent than in the incredible set design that we see here. Parsons has taken the very loose concept of what the Backrooms are (the concept started as an anonymous post on Reddit before Parsons himself turned it into a web series), and rendered it into something very much real and alive. It’s the small details that make the liminal spaces here so effective, even the completely empty rooms exude a sense of menace, and the fact that much of the horror is implied rather than explicitly depicted only makes Backrooms an even more singular experience (although the third act does provide plenty of more traditional horror set pieces). When you actually stop to consider what the implications are for what the Backrooms mean and what lurks in those endless yellow corridors the possibilities are both boundless and incredibly chilling. It is no surprise that Parsons has already talked up the potential of a sequel.
It is yet to be seen how influential and seminal Backrooms will be in the future, but what is not in question is that Parsons has (literally) opened the door to a new phase in horror. He’s given us something else to be frightened of that cinema has never really explored before. Surely, that’s the holy grail for any horror filmmaker? Exciting and shudder-inducing times, indeed.
