Alex Wheeler Movie Ops

The times they are a-changing. The status quo never remains, and films have been in blockbuster mode for a long time. The race for the biggest budget and biggest box office always had an expiration date, and it appears the generational churn may do it in. People who grew up with streaming video and free editing software have become adults, and their DIY approach to storytelling is beginning to topple behemoths. 

Backrooms has stormed to the front of this trend. It made nearly $200 million in two weeks, already making it A24’s highest-grossing movie ever, on a $10 million budget. That’s far more than Kane Parsons worked with when he first made the YouTube series the film is based on, which itself is a riff on an internet creepypasta, all of which share the film’s name. That layered building of its story is indicative of how fast folklore is built in the internet age, with its imagery and ideas twisting timeless concepts into new mythology.

It all began with an eerie photo of a large, empty space that was off-puttingly yellow. The point of view resembles someone leaning to see down a corridor, but they haven’t gone far enough to see its end. It’s a liminal space, a passageway devoid of what came before and will come after, and internet lore expanded it into an endless maze of rooms, corridors, and nightmares.

Parsons sticks close to the original image for Backrooms, making its yellow passageways a distorted version of Clark’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) furniture store. Since this is a horror story, obviously Clark is not a happy man. He’s drinking too much, his wife has left him, and he’s temporarily staying in the store where his career ambitions have died. The only indication that he’s still trying to get his stuff together are his visits with his therapist, Mary, (Renate Reinsve), and even those aren’t very productive. One night, he falls through the wall of his store, revealing the titular backrooms. He finds the place eerily familiar, and it pulls him farther in than is safe.

Why the backrooms opened to him is as much a mystery as what is going on in there, and the film is careful not to answer either question. It doesn’t need to. That it is somewhat reflective of Clark’s mind is enough to make its point, especially when Mary follows Clark into the maze and hits him with her honest appraisal of his psyche (I hope my therapist never speaks to me that way).

No, Backrooms is not a complicated film, but it wheedles its way into you because everyone involved keyed in on what makes the concept so chilling. Parsons himself frequently replicates the original photo’s curiously obstructed gaze, using shadows and optical illusions to make it difficult to discern precisely what is down hallways and in the next room. He can get heavy-handed with the obscurity, though, by playing a little too conveniently with the camera’s point of view to keep the film’s mysteries out of frame. 

Ejiofor brings even less restraint, portraying Clark as a frazzled, broken man who uses his pain as an excuse to lash out. It’s remarkable that he keeps Clark sympathetic. There’s few redeeming qualities to his character, but the unbridled pain Ejiofor taps into is so palpable it’s hard not to feel bad for the guy. Restraint, for Ejiofor, would have been disastrous.

Reinsve has less to play with as the even-keeled therapist, although the glimpses of her background reveal enough trauma to excuse behavior far worse than Clark’s. That she hasn’t let that pain consume her is why she shows up for the film’s big finale, which lets at least one monster step into the light and be directly confronted. It’s clear that Clark is in no state to take it on. Even in the regular world, he turns to Mary to sort out his problems, and so the film’s big battle falls to her, as well. Reinsve still keeps her performance relatively small. She doesn’t follow the film’s late flourishes, and the contrast between her restraint and Ejiofor’s bombast brings Backroom to a clear point, even while avoiding a tidy conclusion.

Release: now in theaters
Director: Kane Parsons
Writer: Will Soodik
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell