Since its inception, I’ve preferred the Backrooms as a concept more than in execution. The idea of a liminal space of endless corridors and sickly-hued office spaces just a thin membrane away from our reality. It works best in ambiguity and the unknown, and attempts to define, document and explain often detract from the concept’s potential. Kane Parsons did not invent the Backrooms, but his YouTube series brought it its greatest fame and widest audience, enough that studio A24 gave him the green light to craft a feature of his own.
The look is right. The hum, the wallpaper, the disquiet of a hallway that runs a little too long are all rendered with real care. Parsons has a sharp eye, and the cinematography and sound design are effectively crafted to augment the mood. What starts as wonder begins to unsettle, and once it becomes apparent other entities share this space, it escalates into dread. It is well executed, but like the rooms themselves, the story is sterile.
The film’s misstep is to assign the Backrooms a purpose. It is an interesting notion that the rooms “misremember” the world informed by the visitor’s trauma and experience, but the concept is given scant room to breathe. The character journeys substitute metaphor for meaning and delivered through exposition. The space becomes an illustration of a damaged man who finds validation of his grievances and gripes, echoed and reconstructed in the endless space, with a therapist on hand to explain.
The film reaches for adult weight, for people stuck in their own loops of self-vindication of their self-sabotage, but delivers the equivalent of a pop-psychology lecture. Parsons has clearly matured as a director, but the script is far from seasoned, speaking with the voice of someone who has read about regret without having lived it.
The film feels unfinished. The last act is rushed, and that’s being extremely generous. The threat reveal elicits more laughs than shudders, and this confrontation ends with an egregious deus ex machina. The biggest lore drops come in the final minutes, and the effect is less a conclusion than a setup. Doubtless Parsons expects to be making sequels for years to come, but that leaves this film playing like a pilot episode rather than a contained story.
Those seeking an expansion of the Backrooms mythology will be disappointed. Those seeking genuine scares will be disappointed too. What is left is an interesting prelude to what will hopefully be a more fulfilling next visit, one that returns to mystery and ambiguity. The terror of the Backrooms is not that they stand for anything, but that they exist and stand for nothing.