BACKROOMS
****
Directed by Kane Parsons.
Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass.
Horror, US, 110 Minutes, Certificate 15.
Released in Cinemas in the UK on May 29th by A24
In the past, you knew you were watching a horror film by its location alone. Gothic castles, scientific labs that resembled churches with their large cogs and lightning conductors, or the house at the end of the street in the suburbs that was home to ghosts, serial killers or both. Now in the 21st century, horror has shifted into a different space, somewhere more familiar and perhaps far more unsettling due to its mundane and recognisable nature. Where horror once lurked in the shadows, it now settles in vast open spaces, overlit by buzzing fluorescent lights that brings out the right shade of faded beige and washed out yellow in the matching wallpaper and carpets. This type of liminal horror has seeped into the genre through all manner of creepypasta, Reddit posts and viral YouTube shorts and clips, which brings us to Kane Parsons BACKROOMS. Inspired mainly by a single social media post of a large room with a vast hallway in the background accompanied by a small paragraph that described the spaces sinister and unsettling nature, Parsons, while still a teenager made a webseries located in his own nowhere land, aided by free software to create this vast, labyrinthine universe where unwilling individuals and a mysterious research institute wander around and document their wanderings in this mysterious netherworld. Four years later, the perennially hip studio A24 steps in to bring the now 20 year old Parsons vision to cinemas. So how does this particular brand of horror play out on a big screen, as opposed to the more personal nature of watching it on your laptop or phone?
Very well, as it turns out. Parsons, aided by screenwriter Will Soodik, makes the film a standalone entry that is completely accessible to an audience who may be visiting this haunting space for the first time. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a frustrated figure, separated from his wife and now sleeping in one of the many beds in his large, underperforming and understaffed furniture store. Sharing his problems with Mary, Renate Reinsve, a psychiatrist with her own issues related to an unsettled and uprooted childhood, Clark soon discovers that located within his store is a vast space of rooms and hallways of all sizes, populated with random furnishings, mannequins, blaring tape recordings and passages to even more hallways that drop into other unsettling spaces. Something else is in there too. Something that once it hears you will chase you around it's maze like home for its own mysterious purposes.
Despite its familiar yet alien landscape, there are familiar elements at play here. A couple of scenes here play out in the found footage format, effectively immersing the viewer into th-is hellishly bland landscape, while one scene echoes THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, albeit playing out in a far quieter fashion. One other undeniable influence is Mark Z. Danielewski’s immersive doorstopper novel HOUSE OF LEAVES. Perhaps the keystone of liminal horror, and suspended in its own development hell after a number of aborted adaptations, the influence of Danielewski’s tale of a house that is bigger on the inside than the outside is undeniable here to anyone that has read it. This film however, is no straight rip off. Parsons has developed a mythology that is simultaneously elusive and enthralling, particularly when it comes to the mysterious motives of the Async Research Institute, who by the time of the films early 1990’s timeframe, have been conducting their own investigations and explorations into the strange space that is oppressive and claustrophobic with its many strange dimensions for quite some time.
Because of the delays brought on by the Hollywood writers strike from a few years ago, Renate Reinsve missed out on the part of Justine Gandy, the role that would eventually go to Julia Garner, in Zach Cregger’s WEAPONS. Her role here of a troubled psychiatrist, is much more than a consolation prize. How her childhood memories and dreams mesh with the titular space and lead on to a hair raising and unsettling journey is also a strangely affecting one, lingering in the mind for some time after a single viewing. Ejiofor also makes for a compelling protagonist, one whose architectural ambitions soon turn to an obsession of mapping out his discovery. The film's narrative, nearly bisected between the two protagonists, plays out nicely in an enticing fashion, spending time with each character in their storylines before they come together again in spellbinding and unnerving fashion culminating in one of the most haunting closing shots to a film in some time.
2026 continues to be the year of YouTube creators graduating to the bigger screen with great results, proving the viewing habits that were taken for granted before are an old media. With the likes of Markiplier and more recently the surprising success of Curry Barker and his box office smash OBSESSION showing that not only is the genre in safe hands creatively but that there could be a whole field of filmmakers out there in the digital ether waiting to unleash their own brand of personal 21st century terrors onscreen in new and creative ways. Barker (Curry that is, not Clive) and Parsons are at the forefront of this wave with a brand of horror that is more personal, striking a chord, especially with younger audiences who find the likes of Krueger, Voorhees and their ilk old hat and perhaps campy. Who knew that mass murderers, supernatural figures and torture porn would be replaced by locations?
As I have said more than once before, horror has always been reflective of the times and Parsons seems to have his finger on the pulse, impressive when you consider he has only just entered his third decade. Perhaps indicative of the uncertainty and fears of younger generations in and for the world today, Parsons has created a haunting story within this vast and mysterious environment that is also entertaining, unnerving and enticing with all of its many angled hallways, rooms, pools and avenues that lead nowhere and perhaps everywhere that will appeal to and excite horror fans both old and new.
Iain MacLeod