There is a lot about the movie “Backrooms” that makes it fascinating, namely its origins as an internet meme and the film’s extremely young director.
But it’s the movie itself and its unique blend of horror, science fiction and set design that truly makes it stand out.
There is a simplicity to the setup, in which hard-luck discount furniture store owner Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) stumbles upon a doorway in his store to a hidden world that is seemingly nothing more than a series of connected, mostly empty rooms that feature bare walls, bland carpeting and fluorescent lighting.
The deeper Clark goes, the odder things get, as he turns down empty corridors, stumbling across occasional flotsam and jetsam from the outside world, like a random piece of furniture or a misplaced street sign.
It also becomes apparent that lurking somewhere in this labyrinth of uncanny office space is a minotaur of sorts, thumping and bumping around.
Unsettled but amazed, Clark hurries off to tell the only stable presence in his life, his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve) who has her doubts about Clark’s grip on reality.
The concept of the Backrooms began online when someone posted an anonymous photo of a large, empty space filled with connected rooms that inspired both dread and wild speculation about how such a place could exist. The location was later revealed to be a furniture store under renovation.
But the cat was out of the bag, and the photo went on to inspire fan fiction, artwork and short films, the most compelling of which were made by high school student Kane Parsons and uploaded to YouTube.
Based on those short films, Parsons has delivered his feature-length debut, “Backrooms,” at the ripe old age of 20.
Parsons delivers the goods in this psychological thriller that combines jiggly found-footage sequences with slow and steady camera work that makes the Backrooms feel like a very real and very uncomfortable space, which serves the movie well when things get increasingly weird.
With strong performances from both Ejiofor and Reinsve, both Oscar nominees, the actors bring an authenticity to this movie as it becomes a meditation on our own tenuous grip on sanity and how physical spaces shape us as much as we shape them.
Fortunately, Parsons resists the urge to over-explain the Backrooms, leaving in place a lot of the mystery that led to the strong, visceral emotions inspired by that original photograph. What makes “Backrooms” work is the patience of the filmmakers and the commitment of the actors to linger in a space that appears to be neutral and harmless, but feels deeply, inexplicably wrong.
I have a feeling that we’ve only just begun to explore the Backrooms.
“Backrooms” is rated R for language and some violent content/bloody images.
