‘Backrooms’ Finds Familiar Ideas Of Change

May and June have proven that summertime cinema is back on the board. Films such as Curry Barker’s Obsession and Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters have made the theater experience so, so, so great again, truly. Kane Parsons’s Backrooms is no different. Known on YouTube as “Kane Pixels”, the now-twenty-one-year-old filmmaker found fame for his ongoing “The Backrooms” web series. Having seen the episodes myself, it’s quite a ride. The interconnected narrative set in the 1980s and early 1990s is possibly the best thing to grace our small screens since the first one or two seasons of the Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things. That is, at least in terms of what Parsons is going for, anyway. The Backrooms follows researchers entering another realm parallel to our own reality. However, in this realm, what people see is freakishly twisted.

Approached by A24 and James Wan’s Atomic Monster to adapt the web series into a feature-length film, Parsons set out to put his creative mind to work. At the age of twenty, Backrooms (removing “The” to differentiate the web series from the film) is an admirable big-screen accomplishment. Produced at thirteen times the budget of Obsession, the film relies heavily on its set pieces and other aesthetic elements to bring Parsons and co-writer Will Soodik’s (Ash vs Evil Dead, Westworld) already adventurous script to life. As a series, The Backrooms is a slow-cooker tale of exploration worth tuning in for with every new episode. Yet, as a film, Backrooms offers more in its takeaways and world-building. I thought the monsters we’d seen so far were horrifying, but boy, was I wrong.

In the film, the monsters of the so-called “backrooms” are just echoes of who we are as human beings. Referred to as “Lifeforms” or “Still Lifes” by Parsons, this makes proper sense. For example, in the second “Found Footage” video, a Lifeform creature resembling a tangle of vines drops from the roof of a room full of roots, branches, and other dark plant-like growth. With the help of the budget, the young filmmaker brings viewers up close to these monsters, which are grotesque beyond belief.

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know

The film’s themes center on change. Furniture store owner Clark’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), represents this push for transformation through her work in psychology. Having published a self-help book of her own, Kline talks a lot about the human mind and its ability to create out of imagination. On one hand, this could be Parsons and Soodik dumping exposition on viewers. There is less of a concrete story and more of how the theme plays into the Backrooms’ world-building. On the other hand, it’s all on purpose, to show our sense of navigation as people and as a society. Some prefer to accept things as they are and reject what is coming, what could be, and what should be.

Regardless, as a film and television critic, I’ve already noted this specific concept when writing about spirals of this and that. I love Kline’s line: “We all have our loops, our habits, [our] behaviors that keep us in circles, reaching for the same solutions over and over again, thinking each time they’ll take you somewhere new, but they don’t.” Similar to, say, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s Westworld television series, Parsons understands the backrooms in relation to our world as “a copy of itself”. Over time, he allows us to witness how worlds and realms expand, sort of like the universe and the idea of alternate or parallel universes. We all have our daily routines, but it is up to us to become key to the right doorways.

In the filmmaker’s official conversation with producer James Wan via A24, Wan refers to the backrooms as “prisons for our souls“. I think this is a perfect description, given how people can feel trapped inside themselves. Clark’s inner problem with his collapsing marriage tries to be resolved through his therapy sessions with Kline. They try role-play, which shows his inability to confront his wife, work, dreams, and life in reality. This liminal space of the mind and of the backrooms doesn’t define any particular mental condition or disorder. Perhaps it’s because Parsons doesn’t want to suggest that every part of it should be a bad thing.

Character Development and Performances

Building on her critically acclaimed roles in Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt’s The Worst Person in the World and Sentimental Value, along with her Hollywood debut in Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man, Renate Reinsve’s role as a final girl in Backrooms is fantastic. It would be easy to compare her to the protagonists of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street film franchise, including Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson. Then again, what Reinsve offers in her role as Mary Kline is the power to push through against a person’s walls and come out alive and, hopefully, in one piece. The main character here is the opposite of Clark. She aims to unlock her mind and break out of herself to let go of her past traumas, having lost her home and her mother.

Chiwetel Ejiofor becomes somebody that I haven’t seen since John Singleton, David Elliot, and Paul Lovett’s Four Brothers (and the Marvel Cinematic Universe fails to trust him): the role of an antagonist. The man’s got some important performances in his past line of work—including Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men and Steve McQueen and John Ridley’s 12 Years a Slave—, but something’s remarkably different in how he portrays the dramas of Clark’s life here. The man has got a job that does not really take him anywhere further. He feels stuck, like many similar folks who haven’t exactly chased their dreams. In a way, Clark is his own monster due to his refusal to fix himself through his marriage or himself.

Final Thoughts on Backrooms

While Backrooms is only another piece of the much vaster puzzle of The Backrooms, Kane Parsons and Will Soodik’s film is merely an exercise for what can come next, and indeed, uncertainty is what defines space. It has a couple of unnecessary horror tropes, such as Clark calling out “Hello?” and “Anyone there?” to a presence or emptiness that could be potentially dangerous; or a character saying “If I don’t come back…” to jeopardize their chances of survival. Otherwise, the script is pretty good.

As for the filmmaking, director of photography Jeremy Cox captures tremendous establishing shots of what is supposed to be the San Jose valley, along with characters’ expressions of fear, helplessness, and complete sadness, and what is for sure the backrooms. Figuratively and literally, sometimes the writing is on the wall. “Why ThinK iN Terms of Magic?? Be REALISTIC!!!”

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars