By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve and Mark Duplass
Directed by Kane Parsons
Written by Will Soodik
A24
BACKROOMS starts off with a found-footage prologue, then segues from that handheld aesthetic to a much more composed visual approach occasionally punctuated with more shaky-cam video, and one of the movie’s achievements is how well it balances the two. The spare immediacy of the bulk of BACKROOMS gives you the feeling of venturing into strange and frightening environments right alongside its protagonists, sharing their curiosity and dread about what they might find there.
Young filmmaker Kane Parsons (a.k.a. Kane Pixels) demonstrates remarkable assurance in his feature-film debut based on his YouTube series, which in turn was inspired by a simple 4chan photo of a furniture store under renovation. And so the movie is set largely in and beneath Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, just such a business where the only thing emptier than the parking lot outside is the showroom itself. Its manager, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), has more issues than just his failing business, where he hasn’t bothered to remove the “RIP OFF” spray-painted on the front window. He has emotional problems as well, stemming from, or just as likely the cause of, his recent divorce. He engages in role-playing sessions with his psychiatrist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), that do more to reveal his tendency to deflect responsibility than to inspire a solution to it.
One thing he does make an attempt to fix is an electrical problem in Cap’n Clark’s, which leads him to discover an alternate reality alongside the basement level. As with a good deal else in BACKROOMS, the transition between realms is eerie in its simplicity. There are no showy effects; Clark simply walks through a wall and finds himself in the first of a maze of rooms that are sickly yellow from top to bottom, occasionally populated by familiar objects arranged in unfamiliar ways. The consistent presentation of these environments just slightly removed from normal is the key to the chilly tension Parsons builds. He and production designer Danny Vermette have expanded on the world created in those shorts but not elaborated on them too much; although odd, random items appear throughout, the absence of abundant design elements, rather than the exaggeration of them, is what gets you shivering here.
It’s also intriguing enough that you can understand why Clark decides to venture further into the backrooms, without even leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. And then to return, having convinced Bobby (Finn Bennett) and Kat (Lukita Maxwell), the young couple who create Cap’n Clark’s cheesy TV spots, to accompany him with their video rig and document what’s down there. Like some of the shorts, BACKROOMS is set in the analog era of 1990, and the rough quality of Bobby and Kat’s footage adds to the did-I-just-see-that? suspense. Like the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies and their ilk, BACKROOMS elicits quite a few jitters just by having the camera look in one direction, and making you sure something horrible will be there when it swings back.
Whether we’re viewing the supernatural situations through that jumpy, mobile lens or, more often, in Parsons’ longer, static images or fluid tracking shots, the movie maintains a largely understated tone, and that includes the performances. Ejiofor’s troubled protagonist and Reinsve’s sympathetic shrink, who also follows him into the backrooms, come off as real, relatable people believably dealing with an uncanny situation. (Also, look fast for a brief appearance by fright fave Katharine Isabelle.) There’s a visual strategy there too—the real-world environments are largely as sparse as the backrooms—and even the freakier sights are rooted in recognizability. SPOILER ALERT here—when we encounter a few of the backrooms’ distorted denizens, their visages echo the kind of generative AI illustrations we’ve all seen that give people an extra body part or facial feature.
Jeremy Cox’s cinematography, along with the unearthly score by Edo Van Breemen and Parsons and sound design by Eugenio Battaglia, create a fully immersive experience. Once the horrors eventually become more explicit, the makeup effects by regular Osgood Perkins collaborator Werner Pretorius are both seriously freaky and strikingly original. There are scenes scattered throughout that explicate the backstory—once again, derived directly from the original videos—and they do succeed in adding an extra level of intrigue. BACKROOMS is at its best, though, when we’re just as mystified—and frightened—by its titular settings and what may lie within them as the characters are.
