The most original film of the year? A mind-blowing head trip like you’ve never seen in your life? Or a gibbering catastrophe of nonsense? Well, the answer to Kane Parsons’ Backrooms might be all three. Or none (it’s rather complicated).
But first, a little very modern history for readers who are, say, over 40 (or, in fact, anyone who isn’t a denizen of the nether regions of the internet).
The idea of “The Backrooms” originated on a 4chan (the very niche online community that most human beings never inhabit) thread in 2019. This in turn had sprung from a “creepypasta” (no, me neither), a photograph of a large, carpeted room with fluorescent lights and pale yellow dividing walls. The image went viral on 4chan when an anonymous user asked others to post more disquieting images that just feel “off”.
So far, so esoteric. But then YouTuber Parsons made a series of 24 short films about a fictional research institute that attempts to investigate The Backrooms. Blending horror and a Blair Witch-style found footage aesthetic as people disappear into this surreal liminal space, the first instalment alone has racked up 78 million views (not bad, eh?).
And now Parsons has made the film of the series of the creepypasta (I know, it’s not easy to get over that internet-speak). Produced by A24 no less. And starring proper stellar performers in Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve.
Ejiofor plays Clark, better known to the fictional American public as the peg-legged Long John Silver pirate in the hilarious TV adverts for his furniture store, Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. But Clark is down on his luck after splitting with his wife, sleeping on a bed in the store and seeing Reinsve’s shrink Mary (a wacky head doctor and author of “The Window Within”).
The fluorescent lighting in Cap’n Clark’s is already going flip-do (film-talk for something strange is going to happen), but then Clark, you know, walks through a wall in the basement and discovers a “large, carpeted room with fluorescent lights and pale yellow dividing walls”. And more and more rooms, connected in a dizzying series or never-ending MC Escher-like configurations. And there’s furniture and shoes and bodies sunk into the floors and ceilings.
What’s going on? No idea, but we all love a portal, especially if it’s terrifying/magical on the other side (preferably both). But so far it feels a bit like a high-concept, low-content video game as Clark clambers around this baffling puzzle (although Ejiofor’s face is wonderfully, expertly bewildered).
That’s until Mary (who has her own mother issues, which aren’t deeply explored) feels the need to investigate her patient. Then it goes maaaaaad! And really scary! In a very good way.
There’s a crackingly twisted and highly amusing scene when Clark sits Mary down to dinner with a six-eyed character that may or may not be a figment of his imagination. “The best part about this,” he smiles to Mary, “is you can eat them”, as he pulls a chunk out of six-eyes’s belly and whacks it on her plate.
As the dinner from hell turns into a murderous, berzerk chase from your worst nightmare, we are in full-on corridors of fear territory. Ever had those dreams where the walls are closing in on you and an unseen lunatic is about to shred you to pieces? Well, we’re there.
You ask yourself again, what the fark is going on?! Are these rooms real? Or are they just the deranged mind of Clark that Mary really, really should not have entered? Or perhaps they’re something completely different and far more sinister… (let’s not spoil it, but there are other characters involved).
Thing is, Parsons (credit to him for making something so entertainingly bonkers at the age of just 20) seems to be an episodic kinda guy, and just as it all gets wildly interesting, it all ends. Just like that. No real explanation. Parsons has hinted at more of “the franchise” to come.
Ejiofor is absolutely brilliant, but it’s a shame that Reinsve (so good in Sentimental Value and The Worst Person in the World) seems a touch miscast. Pretty much any B-list US horror star could have slotted into her role.
Still, if this discombobulator of a freak-out goes viral (and stranger things have happened) it might be one of the biggest films of the year.
In cinemas from May 29
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