‘Backrooms’ Review: Kane Parsons Has The Courage To Get Weird
Backrooms is about to have a massive opening weekend. The YouTube short by Kane Parsons has a successful following. One might say his take on the creepypasta has the same demo as the Five Nights at Freddy’s crowd. There’s no other way to say it. I’m not sure how audiences will receive this film. For a movie popular with today’s youth, it swings further away from crowd-pleasing horror and more toward abstract, oddball horror.
There is some analog horror, the type we would expect from this adaptation. But the film takes some bizarre swings. I’m not sure if the generation trained on the series is ready for a Joe Dante/Sam Raimi-level turn. But they’re going to get one anyway.
The plot of Backrooms
Directed by Parsons and written by Will Soodik, the film centers on Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a furniture store owner grieving his split from his wife. When he isn’t working at Captain Clark’s Ottoman Empire, he seeks therapy from Mary (Renate Reinsve) about his anger and depression.
We also learn that Clark has been sleeping in the furniture store since being kicked out of his house. During his long stays at the store, he becomes aware of an ongoing issue with the electrical system, as the building frequently experiences power outages and fluctuations.
After hiring an electrician, the first oddity appears in the breaker box. Three new switches are crookedly visible inside, and they do not seem to switch anything on or off. Then, while alone in the store, Clark sees the seams of another space in the downstairs section of his store. And, like other victims of the YouTube series, he accidentally stumbles into the endless void of the Backrooms.
Like the YouTube films, Clark is consumed by the vastness of the hallways and the stained-yellow walls lit by flickering fluorescent lights meant for office buildings. The strangeness of it all is so overwhelming that he begins doing his own research, maybe to find meaning in them.
The mysteries of Kane Parson’s Backrooms
The film incorporates both analog exploration of the hallways and conventional narrative filmmaking. The hallways are equally eerie and engrossing as the YouTube shorts. The only limitation of making a performance-driven film is the noticeable scaling down of the rooms.
One benefit of Parsons‘ original approach was his ability to control the weight of the Backrooms using Blender and Adobe After Effects. There is a moment in one of the YouTube films when a girl stuck in the Backrooms enters a wide-open space, and the weight of it feels almost like being trapped in an abandoned mall. There is some of that in the A24 film, but not as much, possibly because more of it was shot practically.
The A24 adaptation also does a decent job of balancing the mysteries posed by the YouTube segments while also offering some answers; for instance, the question of how the location works is answered. But the world within the endless hallways seems so expansive that the intrigue of what lies within remains.
Screenwriter Will Soodik also gives the elusive company Async a face in the film. And that face is none other than Mark Duplass, which is inspired casting given his background as the Creep character.
Will Soodik’s script leans into the weird
Backrooms takes the biggest risks in the third act. Some of it succeeds, while other parts arguably get creatively questionable. There is an abrupt character turn that becomes dark too quickly. One moment, they are behaving like a human; the next, they are on the verge of becoming a sociopath. The seeds were there, but the film needed more time to earn the change.
Additionally, Soodik’s screenplay makes a wildly absurd decision. It’s a climax that no one will see coming. It almost feels like a retcon of the original YouTube film because, as far as Backrooms oddities go, this is entirely brand new.
It is said that Osgood Perkins, the Longlegs filmmaker, mentored Parsons (who is 20 years old). The influence is evident, especially in the final act of Backrooms. Personally, I don’t love his work, but Perkins has a knack for making overly serious horror films that are deeply rooted in absurd irony. The Monkey is one of the best examples.
The ending of Backrooms is intentionally baffling. It’s quite similar to witnessing Nicolas Cage in the role of Longlegs. The viewer will not know whether to laugh or be terrified, but it is certainly a choice. As referenced earlier, the creative swing feels influenced by Joe Dante and Sam Raimi. The design feels reminiscent of unhinged choices like the stop-motion rabbit monster from Dante’s segment in the 1983 Twilight Zone film or any bonkers choice from Raimi’s Evil Dead 2.
The final act will be the ultimate test for longtime fans. And to give credit where credit is due, while not everything works, Parsons should be commended for giving his youthful demographic something bizarre, bonkers, and ambitious to experience. Unlike other properties like Five Nights at Freddy’s, the Backrooms doesn’t play it safe. And for a 20-year-old filmmaker, I respect it.
