Backrooms
Director: Kane Parsons
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Krista Kosonen
Rating: ★★★⯪ (3.5 stars)
The transformation of cinema is underway. Backrooms began as creepypasta. It is now a summer blockbuster, having earned over $150 million worldwide. This sensation from 20-year-old first-time filmmaker Kane Parsons is finally making its way to India as well. And a glimpse at its visuals and scale tells you why it has generated so much buzz. Backrooms gets a lot right – from the eerie setting to the discomforting way in which it has been shot, and of course, the pitch perfect performances. It is an ambitious film told in a novel way. But it is also indulgent and chaotic, and not always in a good way. As Kane Parsons takes the viewers into this unending maze of horrors, he himself struggles to find the right way out.
What is Backrooms about
Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a down-and-out architect, who is struggling to make a living selling furniture, discovers a secret passageway to a hidden world in his office. The world defies all laws of physics. Intrigued, Clark gets his two employees, armed with a handycam, to investigate the mysterious rooms. But there, they realise they aren’t alone. Something may be hunting them. Parallely, Clark’s therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), is struggling with her own demons and doubting Clark’s rants about the mysterious spaces. When Clark disappears, Mary goes to find him, only to end up in the maze herself. Now, she is in a race against time to save herself from her mysterious pursuer and also try to figure out where she is.
What sets Backrooms apart
It shows that the film is made by a 20-year-old with no baggage of mainstream filmmaking. Kane Parsons has created a world that feels fresh. It has drawn inspiration from various found footage films and uncanny valley stories seen in the last two decades, but the lore is original, the presentation is fresh. The way Ken Parsons frames this world is also praiseworthy. The almost other-worldly cinematography (by Jeremy Cox) and score (by Parsons himself) add a touch of discomfort to the viewer. Without any major jump scares, the film manages to scare you, or at least creep you out, on multiple occasions.
The performances are perfect for the genre, with Renate Reinsve standing out as the woman caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. On a generational run, the actor again brings fear to the screen in a manner that few can. Chiwetel Ejiofor carries the film in the first half, setting up the premise through the eyes of his bewildered character almost perfectly.
The undercurrents of human behaviour
Obsession, the other low-budget horror sensation of the past month, was a critique of man’s refusal to recognise women’s autonomy. In a similar vein, Backrooms is about humans’ unwillingness to identify their own failings, let alone work on them. But unlike Curry Barker, who brought out the behaviourial underucurrents beautifully in Obsession, Kane Parsons struggles to balance them with the visual imagery he wants to create for Backrooms. The film flittles between wanting to be a literal claustrophobic nightmare and a metaphorical one. The slow-burn pace is good for keeping the viewer engaged, but every once in a while, the film crawls to a pace so slow that the tension seems to ebb out.
Backrooms raises the important question. Does a film always have to entertain, or merely engaging the audience is enough? The film will, no doubt, spark conversations, fan theories, and fanfictions, like any open-ended mystery does. But it does so by stripping entertainment away in favour of awe, wonder, and fear.