Backrooms looks set to become the number one movie at the worldwide box office, but for audiences not chronically online, or over the age of 25, the question they may be asking themselves is, “What are the Backrooms?”
Backrooms is what the kids refer to as “creepypasta”. A term given to a horror myth or legend that was born and spread over the internet, e.g. The Slender Man.
This particular universe began life as a single image on 4chan of an empty office building or storeroom with the text:
“If you are not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it is nothing but the stink of old, moist carpets, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell heard you.”
It quickly became an online phenomenon and inspired a popular YouTube series by then-16-year-old Kane Parsons, which expanded the lore behind this languid, liminal space.
Distribution disruptors A24 were so impressed, they took this director (not legally old enough to drink in the USA) and gave him $10 million, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, and let him loose to make a feature film.
The results are impressive on more levels than the titular space…
In terms of plot, Ejiofor plays the owner of a furniture store who is struggling both on a personal and professional level. When he discovers a hidden entrance to the Backrooms in the basement of his store, his long-suffering therapist (Rienseve) must step through the portal to save him…
The plot, as it were, may seem as thin as the walls between reality and the backrooms. However, give two of the finest actors working today the material, and it gives the story gravitas and keeps one foot in reality despite the movie’s fantastical nature.
This is 100% a film where the goal is generating atmosphere over a traditional three-act structure. And boy, does it succeed. Heightened by the fact that there is no cut-and-dry explanation as to what is happening.
Genuine fear comes from the unknown. When we cannot rationalise or explain the horror we feel, the more it disorients and unnerves us. The exploration of this space that feels familiar, and yet different enough, that it causes the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up. Audiences will be on the edge of their seats during the events on screen, and on edge long after they have left the cinema. A sense of dread will creep into the bottom of their stomach every time they enter a room with yellow-tinged walls…
Parsons maintains a high level of dread throughout, but also punctuates it at key moments with handheld POV video footage, reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project. Both are box office horror sensations with incredible backstories built on the internet, and these sequences contain the same chaotic energy that thrills and terrifies in equal measure.
Like the characters losing themselves in the maze of seemingly infinite corridors, the film does lose its way ever so slightly in the final third with a left-field tonal shift that abandons some of the subtleties in favour of a more direct horror approach. It will work for some, perhaps not for others, depending on how deep you have fallen down the rabbit hole.
That being said, what an exciting rabbit hole it is. One that has the potential to go on, and on, and on. Following on from Obsession, Backrooms has put horror at the forefront of Hollywood, and is one of the most genuinely unsettling viewing experiences in years.
Backrooms is in cinemas now
Rating: 
Director: Kane Parsons
Stars: Chiwetel Ojiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass
Runtime: 110 minutes
Country: USA
