I wasn’t aware of the initial creepypasta photo or viral web series that inspired Kane Parsons’ singularly unsettling BACKROOMS but it somehow seems strangely familiar to me anyway. I feel like I actually know and have experienced such liminal spaces in dreams my whole life. Most my dreams are about cat wrangling for sure, but on many occasions I’m just a poor sap trying to find his way home from a maze like mall/hotel/airport. It didn’t help my psyche that after viewing BACKROOMS at my local AMC, I exited into Philly’s barely functioning “Fashion District” mall. Once the greatest mall known to man (SUNCOAST VIDEO, FYE, KAYBEE TOYS, etc), it’s now a confusing maze of escalators that go nowhere, ramps that hit walls, food courts serving things I’ve never heard of, broken elevators, and restricted doorways. It even has the nerve to connect to a subway, a train station and many an office building presumably filled with people pushing papers and whatnot. It’s not a great vibe and I took it as a mocking, personal attack when I heard Madonna’s “This Used to Be My Playground” piping throughout the joint. It was a little too on the nose.
Our labyrinthine tale concerns a would be architect (nice touch) named Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofoor) who works at an insane pirate themed furniture store that proudly boasts of its selection of ottomans. Not surprising, he has a shrink and her name is Mary Kline (eerie Renate Reinsve). The two often role play the fateful night Clark’s wife (understandably) skedaddled. Mary’s not exactly the picture of mental health either as she was raised by a mother who had agoraphobia so bad she covered the windows with newspaper and blocked the front door with (thematically fitting) furniture. Making things all the more stressful is that this all takes place in the nineties, insuring everything is aesthetically questionable to say the least. It’s all so ugly it goes full circle to become pretty damn hip. One day poor Clark discovers that his store’s basement has the peculiar feature of an inter dimensional doorway into an impossible area where time seems to be crashing into itself and forming bizarre anomalies one of which is a predatory monster portrayed by the guy (Robert Bobroczkyi) who played the offspring in ALIEN: ROMULUS. Mary is skeptical at first but a series of seriously trippy occurrences will make her far less so.
BACKROOMS is not a movie one easily deciphers or forgets. It’s nearly hypnotic and like author Mark Z. Danielewski’s THE HOUSE OF LEAVES it is built to eschew expectations or familiar rules (on a few occasions I was also reminded of 2002’s SKINAMARINK in that it seems almost more of an art installation (or even the "Mirror, Father, Mirror" video from GHOST WORLD (2022)) then your standard movie). For some reason while viewing I thought the heart of the film was Clark trying to get over the demise of his marriage but I guess it’s more about dealing with how that relationship shattered all of his life dreams and left him a mutation of his former self with only ugly and useless splintered memories to show for it (or maybe that’s projection). I couldn’t help yearning for a more emotionally upbeat conclusion but realistically that would go against the entire endeavor (In other words this is no CUBE (’97) or ESCAPE ROOM (2019). Blatant bummer or not, BACKROOMS absolutely delivers on sights and sounds you’ve never experienced before, more than a few seriously nightmarish visuals, a good jolt or two and a lot to process and think about once it’s done. I guess my lone takeaway advise is don’t go see it in a space (mental or physical) that the film mirrors like I did. The result is truly unnerving.
