Backrooms Review

I have a rule: that I will only watch one film's trailer once whenever possible. Now, I know a common practice among film critics is to avoid trailers. But although here I slap away at my keyboard, putting digital words to digital paper about films for you the reader to read, I am a fan first and foremost. I love all kinds, and that includes horror. So when I first saw the preview for "Backrooms," the cinema buff in me perked up with unreasonable levels of excitement. I created expectations that no movie probably could satisfy. Then I actually saw it.

In a packed, rowdy theater, where even the nosebleed section was filled, I admired "Backrooms" for its ambition, it's spectacular premise, evocative set design and general sense of mystery, but I can't recommend it. Then again why can't I? Just because it is filled with idiotic characters, offers absolutely no explanation, is about ten minutes too long and overall frustrating? How could I be frustrated if it didn't tickle that little film freak in me?

Set in the 90s, for no particular reason other than to possibly remove the problem of characters having cell phones, this is a movie that, yes, is about big, empty rooms. Walls colored an olive green, rooms connect with no rhyme or rhythm and they go on and on. You can hear the fizzing of the fluorescent lights and practically can smell the cigarette smoke baked into the carpet: the whole thing is innocent in theory but unsettling in practice.

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, a loser owner of a discount furniture store who is still struggling with his wife leaving him. He has no real friends, unless you count his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) or his two, dating, employees, Bobby and Kat (Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell, respectively). Mary has her own baggage (probably could use a shrink herself), told through flashbacks of her abusive upbringing by her paranoid mother, but at least she has any development: our poor staff lover pair, um, well she wears flip flops and him shoes, I guess?

Clark's shop isn't doing too well, never a customer ever in sight, and to make matters worse, the lights keep flickering, sometimes going out entirely. An electrician notices some baffling breakers in the downstairs, which seemingly do nothing. But then one night, Clark is drinking, watching TV while lounging on his own merchandise (maybe it's used furniture?) when the TV shows what looks like security footage of some strange place, then turns off. The lights flicker too, so the inebriated business owner marches back down to the breakers, flipping them indiscriminately. Them all off now, he ends up walking past a wall when he notices something: a chartreuse mist barely poking through a seemingly solid wall.

It turns out that the wall isn't a wall, but a sort of doorway to the titular labyrinth. You can freely walk in and out as well, which doesn't really make any sense considering no one has ever even accidentally bumped into the portal. Unless Clark really never has any patrons, but I digress. 

What exactly is in the backrooms? On the first night, Clark senses something, seeing things crash about once he's further inside and needs to escape back to his store. But the surprising discovery and possible threat aren't enough for him to like, you know, call the police or the Ghostbusters or something. Instead, he spends several off-screen days crudely mapping it out on paper. He presents this to Mary, who understandably doesn't believe him, so he offers Kit and Bobby overtime to help him delve even deeper inside. Specifically, this one hallway that's at too steep a decline to traverse without a sort of rope or something. Armed with a video camera, Bobby goes down and well, I should probably skip past this.

Later on, and by reasons never defined, Clark leaves a message on Mary's answering machine, ultimately saying he won't be able to see her again. Then, in an obvious breach of the Tarasoff rule, she heads into his store, right as he described, and enters herself. Alone, without contacting anyone first. Now, I am no therapist, nor do I have one, but someone really should check this lady's credentials.

More things happen, then even more things, but there's less here than the sum of its parts. I appreciated the light touches of comedy (especially Clark's local commercials early on), but with moments of thrillers, science fiction, psychological and body horror, but to what end? Why are their security cameras? What exactly is inside these rooms, and why are they here? How has no one ever noticed them? You'd think construction workers or something would have stumbled into them by mistake.

"Backrooms" sets up all these interesting ideas but is ultimately untrustworthy with the power it wields. And just when you think it's going to settle down and fully explore one of the many different paths to take it's shockingly fun idea, the filmmakers pivot to yet another underexplained area. And I would be fine with an exercise in the philosophical, but you can't expect your film to deserve such mental gymnastics to comprehend when you only tackle such topics when you can come up with interesting ways to film it.

But then I remember that this is director Kane Parsons and writer Will Soodik's first feature film, made with a reported budget of just ten million. This is not some sleazy, exploitative cheapie but a thought-provoking and thought-aggravating work of pure and blind enthusiasm.