‘Backrooms’ – Kane Parsons Turns Internet Creepiness into Nightmare Fuel

Man, what is Backrooms, the new debut horror film by Kane Parsons and based on his web series of the same name? With a screenplay by Will Soodik, the film seems to be based on the same name. I read up on where the Backrooms came from, internet message board discussions of creepy spaces, liminal spaces, and interdimensional aesthetics, and terms like creepypastas, and this is only the surface of all this.

While I don’t have to get all of that, and neither do you, to enjoy this film, a horror story about the unease of being in a large building full of fluorescent lights and endless hallways is a familiar setting for anyone who lives in this modern world. For me, the extradimensional space reminded me of working in an empty office building during the pandemic for a year. I instantly empathized with the characters.

In this story, we meet Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, and his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline, played by Renate Reinsve. Here we have Clark, a furniture store owner and failed architect, trying to work out the issues of his recent separation from his wife with Dr. Kline. In a very bad place in how he feels about his life, the struggles of the furniture store owner lead him to find this place in the basement of his store. The film feels like it takes the 32bit world of video games and extrapolates it into the real world. Empty halls with furniture merged together and into the walls. Like a buggy game world, like when you see models clipping together.

Ejiofor is great here as Clark, as he does well to balance the man’s insecurities, anger, and wondrous bewilderment with the new space. He has some good stuff in here as he’s exploring what at times feels like one of those museums where they can make you feel huge or small, and it works with how Parsons moves the camera around the space. Making you feel claustrophobic at times and sprawling and empty at others. Cinematographer Jeremy Cox has this haze over the world that feels a bit like watching the film on CRT television, adding to the nostalgic feeling of the film.

Finn Bennett plays Bobby, and Lukita Maxwell plays Kat, Clark’s employees who are also in a relationship. They add some great banter and good light character to bounce off of when explaining and showing them the backrooms. While not a lot of screentime, they do make an impact on the film. Reinsve’s Mary Kline is the parallel main character we see flashbacks to her past, and as it affects and informs her work with Clark and in her life. The film is split in half when she becomes the protagonist. When she takes over the film, the tone shifts a bit into more of a survival horror.

Reinsve’s performance shifts well as she travels deeper and deeper in this funhouse mirror of a world. It gets more claustrophobic and tense as the film drives towards its climax. The last scene, in which Reinsve and Ejiofor have some of the best acting in the whole film, and the two go back and forth, echoing back to earlier conversations in the film. It gets very tense and uncomfortable, which starts to push the film into some of its most creepy scenes.

The climax of the film gave me new nightmare fuel that I still can’t get out of my head. Backrooms was a great horror movie experience and is a film that feels different from a lot of other films out there. A24 could have another solid horror hit this summer.