Full of disturbing imagery and the horrorof liminal spaces, Kane Parsons’ series of shorts set in a mythology of 90’s found footsage aesthetic works outside its audience with compelling performances from Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve
★★★ & 1/2 ★ OF ★★★★★ stars
It’s being said that we’re in a bit of a golden age or renaissance of modern horror films with new auteurs being plucked from video-sharing sites like YouTube or unlikely crossovers from the worlds of absurdist comedy. From the runaway success of comedians like Jordan Peele in the world of horror, we have BriTANicK and The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone making a horror splash debut in OVER YOUR DEAD BODY and Curry Barker’s crossover from YouTube comedy into this year’s horror highlight obsession. But then there’s Kane Parsons, a 20 year old who has been creating the rich and weird mythology of The Backrooms since his early teens, weaving a 90’s found footage aesthetic into a tale of a self perpetuating and replicating environment and the bizarre corporation A Sync that explores what it could be. There’s a first person video game aesthetic to it reminding you of a Silent Hill meets Resident Evil vibe with an equal Stranger Things/Upside Down flavor but it is undeniably its own thing. A24 took a chance and let Kane as a 20 year old take the reigns of this universe to the big screen with an original story set within it and he knocks the ball out of the park in this atmospheric debut.
Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a furniture store owner with anger control issues. He’s in a failed marriage and in therapy to try to figure out how to address his issues. One day at his job (a bizarre pirate themed store called Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire) he finds a portal to another part of the store that seems off. He becomes obsessed with tracking these “backrooms.” He shares their existence with his therapist Mary (played by Sentimental Value’s Renate Reinsve). who doubts him until he disappears after receiving a cryptic message that he opened the window and hes not coming back. She finds his map and finds herself in the backrooms, a realm she learns is replicating the real world based on the experiences of those who enter it – but without a reference besides a mental picture, its doing it wrong – like asking someone who’s never seen a dog to draw one, based only on a description from an unreliable narrator. Ejifor is terrifying in this, adding a different flavor from what we’ve seen in his oeuvre and Reinsve, who was the best part of Joachim Von Trier’s Sentimental Value shines here with a backstory she explores that haunts you throughout the film.
The visuals and production value in Backrooms are next level. You can see every dime of the film on the big screen. Ejiofor and Oscar nominated Reinsve also give the whole piece gravitas. Parsons and his crew are judicious with the use of creatures in this world so what you see has added weight and the practical effects make the whole proceeding that much more effective. The narrative in this film is very suggestice rather than literal. Think Weapons if you want an idea of what to expect storywise, youre handed snippets and asked to put iot tother and Mark Duplass, himself no stranger to mumblegore features like this adds a lot of gravitas and lore in his supporting role.
Overall, Backrooms strength is less is more. You have strong actors anchoring a nebulous premise and youre handed enough to make it compelling and worth rewatching to see what you missed. It does seem a bit derivative of Silent Hill by way of Channel Zero Dead End Street, but that aesthetic is something younger viewers have grown up with; this sense of first person dread and creepypastas they can emerge themselves in. It;s a good first outing and I look forward to more from Parsons and this IP.
Backrooms hits theatres on May 29th
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VIDEO REVIEW