Been sitting on this one to understand a bit more of what this movie is really about, first I watch it with zero knowledge of what the Backrooms are, if you only watch the movie without context its not that good, in fact its very hollow, it does scare you a bit but not even hard core psychological horror, and the best parts of Backrooms are when it just sits in that empty space below Clarks furniture store and lets the silence and the electrical hum carry the scene, on this movie the sounds are a big part of it. It does not need jump scares or a monster around every corner to keep you locked in, the walls, the old furniture, the fluorescent lights all look close enough to a normal store that just one thing being slightly off is what actually gets to you, very similar to other movies like Smile, that take something totally normal and turns it into horror without reshaping it. The movie develop the story of a man who is not doing well in life, his name is Clark and he walks through a wall in his own basement and ends up in another version of his store, one that keeps shifting the farther he walks and I liked that the movie just lets him be confused for a while before anything turns dangerous. Nothing even has to jump out at him for the place to feel wrong, there is no direction, no way out, nobody explaining anything and that is enough to create this extremely unsettling place. Even later on when Clark drags his assistant manager and her boyfriend down there to get proof on camera, the scariest part is not whatever attacks them, its just the feeling that these people wandered somewhere that never wanted them around. The pacing stays slow on purpose and works so good when it stays quiet and what gets me the most is how nothing makes sense, how an upside down world can be this scary, I guess part of fear itself comes from what we cant understand.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26657236/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
Clark himself is the first sign this movie is going to keep explaining itself, because his personal life gets spelled out long before the Backrooms do at therapy, we get this role play excersise that spill all the beans of how fucked up his life is and the core problems he is dealing with. He owns the furniture store, sleeps there, drinks too much and is still angry about his marriage ending, and Chiwetel Ejiofor makes his frustration feel real even when Clark is clearly the problem. He does not walk into the Backrooms as some regular guy who suddenly turns dangerous, his therapy sessions already show he wants Dr Mary to agree the divorce was not his fault and he gets angry the second she suggests he treated his wife badly. So when he ends up choosing to stay somewhere that never challenges him over facing what he did, it tracks it makes so much sense that he get to like the insanity he at first fear, Backrooms turn into his safe place. I feel like the movie gave out the secret sauce to easy, just as how fast Clark also accept the place without loosing much, once Clark explains the strange people and rooms are just damaged copies of memories, it hands you an answer to something that was scarier with no answer at all. Then a pirate shaped double of Clark shows up and goes after Mary, and its a replica of his ideas, fear and feelings, an exact replica of the mascot from his own store commercials that it is obviously his temper he never deals with. It is a decent idea, but it turns the Backrooms into an extension of one guy instead of something bigger than him and some of the uncertainty that made the first half so good goes out the window.
Renate Reinsve is doing just as much work as Ejiofor here, but her scenes with Clark are where the writing gets too direct again. She plays Mary as tired and worried and pretty unsure how much she can actually do for this guy, so she never feels like a therapist who is only there to explain Clark to us, but also her own backstory matters too, she grew up locked inside a house with a mother who was clearly not well and she still carries around this piece of concrete with her childhood handprint pressed into it, so she gets what it is like to need to escape somewhere someone else made unsafe. I liked that the only reason she goes into the Backrooms in the first place is because she gets worried after Clark stops showing up to sessions, so there is an actual reason for her to be there instead of some plot excuse. Once she finds him, the movie turns their conflict into another therapy session and says out loud what it already showed us, Clark wants Mary to play his ex wife and tell him he was right, and Mary tells him she cannot fix him and he can stay in there if he refuses to deal with what he did. I get the point, I just did not need it spelled out, Clark likes the Backrooms because none of the fake people there ever push back or expect better from him, and Mary only gets him to let her go once she stops giving him the answer he wants. The performances bot Renate and Chiwetel are so good on this movie but its the dialogue keeps translating fear into a lesson where the environment and sounds had already made without saying a word.
Towards the ending the movie starts to get a bit dragy, that part where both Clark and Mary are basically getting absorb by this Backrooms world, once it moves from the quiet horror of the rooms into a straight chase and a whole research group, with the big pirate creature that was creepy at first just because it is such a wrong version of Clark, but the more the movie ties it directly to his store mascot, the less scary and more explained it becomes. Mary running from it gives the ending some action but that chase feels more ordinary than earlier scenes where just a hallway or a pile of clothes or a badly copied person made the room feel dangerous, this movie already proved it could scare me without a full creature sprinting after somebody. Then the A Sync Research Institute shows up, this group that has apparently been watching the Backrooms and grabs Mary right after she gets out, and it barely gives you anything besides a promise there is more going on. Mark Duplass is fine in the small amount he gets, his calm way of questioning her makes it obvious she is not free, but the whole scene feels like it belongs to a different movie starting up right as this one should be ending. I get why that material is there, the opening already hints someone is watching footage from inside, but it makes the ending feel scared to stay with Clark and Mary and let their story be the whole point.
I still liked a good amount of Backrooms because the direction has real patience in the slower scenes and both of the main characters keep the personal stuff entertaining even when the script gets too clear about its own point. It knows how to make a big empty room feel wrong just from silence and distance and strange copies of normal objects, and that is stronger than anything it says out loud. I mention above how the Backrooms turn for Clark the perfec escape from reality, he would rather live angry than admit he hurt the people around him, and Mary fighting her way out works too because she finally stops doing his emotional work for him. I just wish the movie trusted them and the setting more instead of explaining every damaged person as a memory, giving Clark a literal pirate double, and tacking on a research group that might keep going. The final shot of a distorted version of Mary gets that uncertainty back, I am not sure if it means the real Mary got out while a copy stayed behind or if she is still stuck down there, and that is the kind of not knowing this movie needed more. Backrooms had a setup that is strong enough to carry something stranger than what we got, I felt things were just too simple and basic and this is where context lack. Backrooms does prove that Kane Parsons knows how to build fear out of space and patience alone, I just wanted it to stop explaining itself and let the fear stay confusing. They already working on a sequel that I hope gives out more context to the story with a direct connection to this one, and also run with a straight up horror and keep you confuse of whats going on but most likely it wont since a sequel would make sense if they start the story of the men who are studying the Backrooms.
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Rating: 75/100
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