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I was looking forward to seeing Backrooms so much that I went to the cinema to see it. Usually, my trips to the cinema are earlier in the day, but I went to a 6pm showing, and to my pleasant surprise, the cinema was about three-quarters full.
This review will be spoiler-free, as there’s too much to unload in the story, so read on without any fear of major spoilers.
Backrooms stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennet and Lukita Maxwell. Kane Parsons, or Kane Pixels, directs and co-writes with Will Soodik.
The Story
As I said, I’m not going to spoil things here, but the synopsis is:
After a therapist’s patient disappears into a dimension beyond reality, she must venture into the unknown to save him.
We open with one of the original Backrooms videos. It’s 1990, and someone is lost in the back rooms. As they progress through the unknown corridors, they are ‘stopped’. We see this from a video that’s being watched by ‘some people’.
It’s still 1990, but we meet Clark (Ejiofor). He’s having a therapy session with Mary (Reinsve). We learn that his life is not good, and he lost his house and wife, all in one evening. She’s not dead, just kicked him out.
It turns out, he’s living in his store that he runs, Capt’n Clarks, but it’s a crappy furniture store. There’s an issue with the electrics, and one night, he ends up discovering a ‘gap’ in a wall. He goes to lean against it and falls through into some ‘backrooms’.
As he explores, he learns he’s not alone in there. That’s all of the story I’m going to spoil, but they have done a great job in keeping the entire thing interesting.
The Cast
Ejiofor is great as Clark. When he first enters the backrooms, we are with him all the way, wondering what on earth is going on, but also always having to move forward, just to see what this place is.
That’s all I can say about him, without spoiling his character. We also have Reinsve playing Mary. Mary has her own demons to deal with, which may or may not have relevance to the backrooms.
There are more characters, but again, I can’t really go into detail without spoiling anything. All of the cast are very good, even though they have very little to do. What I mean by that is, there’s one section with Clark that’s about 15 minutes of silence. It really builds the tension, and without any jump scares, you’re literally leaning around each corner the same as Clark. Everyone carries the movie really well.
K.I.S.S.
Not the band, but the acronym, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Modern horror has become pretty stale in my opinion. Everything has to be spelt out, the plot has to follow all the rules, and you have to have either jump scares or make it gross out. These things don’t make a good horror most of the time.
Parsons takes it all back to basics, it’s amazing how scary a shadow can be, or a Christmas tree. He keeps all of the atmosphere building to a point where I felt like I was holding my breath. I haven’t had that since a good Dario Argento movie; Inferno, if you’re wondering.
When a simple shadow moves across the screen, there’s no massive hit of a musical score or anything jumping out with a loud bang. You see it, at the same time as Clark, and you start to worry for him.
The Music, or lack thereof
The other interesting thing about Backrooms is the lack of music. There is a score, but it’s in the same style as Forbidden Planet; it’s more like sound effects than actual music. There is a rhythm or beat to some of it, but it’s mostly just noises.
Strange noises too, which makes it more unnerving. Again, there are no violins building to a jump scare; the music is more just odd sound effects, so you don’t know if it’s building to something or not. I liked this a lot.
Overall
As I have said, I’m a fan of the Backrooms YouTube Channel. I think the creator has done a great job in taking horror back to basics. I saw Lee Cronin’s The Mummy the other day, and it’s a pretty good horror, but it’s also a pretty generic horror.
The Mummy is about a kid, the parents have to help them out, and it’s all explained what is happening and why. There’s some over-the-top gore, paint-by-numbers photography, which is all mostly overly CG’ed and just generic.
Backrooms is not the same. It’s not another franchise sequel, where everyone is guessing who Ghostface is or running away from Freddy. I have seen those types of movies a million times, and they can be fun, but mostly generic.
Then you have movies like Backrooms and Exit 8, which strip everything away. This is only a mild spoiler, but you never find out what the backrooms are. Are they another dimension? Are they a vivarium for aliens? Is it a government experiment gone wrong?
I love how everyone will have their own ideas. At the end of the movie, I thought they might have tried to explain everything, but thankfully, they don’t. I read that Parsons purposefully kept the lore hidden. I think he created the first of the Backrooms and still hasn’t thought out a full explanation. Movies like this leave it up to you, and don’t spell things out.
There were a group of lads behind me, who I thought were going to talk all the way through the movie, and I was going to have to go all Bruce Lee on their asses. The funny thing was, when the movie started, not one of them made a sound. There are a couple of sequences where Clark is exploring the backrooms, and you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium. I haven’t had that experience in a while.
Not giving anything away, the final shot of the movie is a very good one. I felt myself smiling at that final scene. As the credits came up, I heard a couple of the lads say:
“Well, that was a shit ending!”
They all agreed. I couldn’t help but smile. These lads were ‘modern horror’ fans; they want to see blood, a bit of boob, and everything spelt out for them. A movie like Backrooms holds back some of the main elements, so you can leave it up to your imagination. Again, something very much lacking these days.
I went into Backrooms, hoping it was going to be good, but with an open mind. I was pleased it didn’t disappoint me, and I will be watching it again.
With all of the horror I usually have to wade through, Backrooms was something very different, well-made, and actually built tension and suspense. I’m giving it the same as Exit 8, a full 5 stars, as it’s a very well-made movie, a great story for something so simple, and I really enjoyed it. There is so much more I want to talk about this movie, but will just have to wait.
Backrooms is still at the cinemas.
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