The vibes were pretty immaculate, capturing that oppressive feeling of loneliness in the mundanity of 90s suburban life and its nostalgic aesthetic.
Much respect to Kane Parsons and cowriter Will Soodik for attempting to tell an actual story centered on characters, tying the creepypasta concept of the Backrooms into the personal struggles of loser furniture salesman Clark (Eljifor) and his therapist Mary (Reinsve). Some of the progression of the characters and their relationship falters towards the end, but they remain engaging enough protagonists with enough context clues to help you understand their states of mind. While you can understand them emotionally through Eljifor and Reinsve's good performances, they are a bit underwritten. A little more development would have gone a long way to make certain emotional beats hit harder.
The script smartly avoids trying to explain anything about the Backrooms itself, leaving its mysterious nature nebulous, with characters merely speculating at its workings. What made the Backrooms such a fascinating concept is the unsettling blend of distorted familiarity and seclusion. Not merely a terrifyingly empty space filled with misremembered bits and parts, here the backrooms carries a sense of melancholy.
Feeding off the issues plaguing Clark and Mary's psyches, the backrooms are made into a reflection of past traumatic memories, fading and twisting with time, eventually morphing into something hostile and claustrophobic. It brings to mind the Shimmer from Annihilation, where an unknowable entity reflects the world around it in ways both hauntingly beautiful and monstrous, seemingly with no ill-intent. How the characters interact with this entity ultimately determines their fates.
While it would have been easy to just poop out a crowd-pleaser full of generic scares and fan-servicey "entity chases" to appease the attention span deprived Gen Z and Gen Alpha crowds (or whatever schlock that American Horror Stories episode did with the concept), the decision to make this more of a slow-burn, thoughtful character focused film that invites discussion is a brave swing and helps set it apart from other horror fare born from internet meme culture.
That said there are actually a few genuinely thrilling sequences, such as the few "first person" camera portions that are quite tense and unnerving (much like Parsons' web series).
The film is also quite beautiful to look at, with the vast backrooms sets bringing physicality to the typically digital depictions of the setting. Even scenes set in the regular world give off an eerie vibe, with characters framed specifically to be utterly surrounded by their mundane environment, representing their isolation even in day-to-day life.
Though I was satisfied by the eerie vibes and liminal imagery, some may find the film lacking in scares. A particular creature shown towards the end feels a little more goofy than frightening, but worked for what it represented.
This is a very respectable feature film debut from Parsons, and I certainly look forward to his next film project (even if it's likely more Backrooms).
yousharknotpass
snowghoul
romaincrisis
dededos
turnnoffyourmind