An exceptional feature debut from Kane Parsons after his liminal horror YouTube series, in which individuals document further exploration into the depths of the “Backrooms” in a found-footage style. At the age of 20, Parsons has been recognised as the youngest director in cinema to date to have a film debut at number one both domestically and in the global box office. Post-YouTube origins, Backrooms can be seen not only as an unsettling distortion of memory and reality through the nightmarish liminal horror hallways of a seemingly never-ending 90s office block – and therefore a true nightmare for middling, existential office workers trapped in the endless loop of unfulfilling, dead end job roles – but a poke at the sloppy reproductive nature of AI “art” and its role in conveyor-belt production in place of carefully constructed, authentic art.
We all have our loops. Our habits. Behaviours that keep us walking in circles. Reaching for the same solutions over and over again. Thinking each time will take you somewhere new, but they don’t.
Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an alcoholic, failed architect now separated from his wife, stumbles across a hidden doorway to the mysterious Backrooms in the basement of his discount furniture store, Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire – itself a muddled confusion of identity as he dresses as a pirate rather than the more obvious Sultan, as per the “Ottoman Empire” in its name. However, nights of exploration reveal that the Backrooms aren’t as empty as they may seem and it doesn’t take long before his therapist, Mary, is dragged in to search for him after he goes missing. Beyond its liminal experience, Backrooms explores how memories of the past can not only come back to haunt you later in life, but act as a veritable prison to those who are incapable of letting go of the past.
While the uncertainty of the Backrooms – what may be hiding around the next bend – is a cause of much of the films tension, Danny Vermette’s brilliant production design, with real construction blending with digital illusion, creates a maddening, authentic feeling reality in a world based on breaking the rules of reality itself. If you’ve ever seen Parsons original series of YouTube films, you’ll likely have a firm grasp of the lore and fundamental ideas that make the Backrooms what it is. However for those who are unfamiliar, and its fair to say a good number of the crowd will be introduced to Parsons work here, Backrooms stands as a perfect introduction to the concept, serving as both a stand-alone story with fresh characters while managing to simultaneously coincide with and continue to explore the existing canon built before it. A feat that is hard to accomplish yet successfully managed here: credit due to writer Will Soodik.
Imagine describing a dog to someone who’s never seen on before and then asking them to draw it. They might get some things right, you know, but there is no way they would get everything right, you know? The devil is in the details.
Delving further into the Backrooms, beyond the dim yellow office block we come across a distorted swimming pool and a densely packed maze of industrial pipes where geometry becomes increasingly wrong and a creeping sense of dread looms around every corner, becoming increasingly worse the deeper you go. That said as Backrooms becomes increasingly bizarre in every which way, a real fascination, not to mention concerning yearning to explore its non-sensical vastness, is accompanied with a progressive sense of danger and unease making it a perfect cinematic experience that makes use of its simplicity to create a truly unique experience.
