All in all, this probably my most topical Recommendation post ever – partly because it actually does fit my recent spate of Horror Recommendations for October, and also because it’s for a movie that actually only came out earlier this year.
I’m not usually this prompt. I, uh, I don’t see many movies in theatres.
Ahem.
Inspired by a viral photo of a hobby store in Wisconsin undergoing renovations…
Original image by Bob Mazza. image via Wikimedia Commons. The original author allows the image to be reused for any purpose.
…the Backrooms began life as a 4chan creepypasta that ultimately grew into an elaborate shared universe with its own extensive lore and history. I’ve said before that I don’t really do Horror well, so I’m fairly unfamiliar with the Backrooms canon that has developed on the Internet.
As I understand it: the Backrooms are a sort of parallel/sub-dimension that serve as a sort of backroom to our reality (hence, the name). While there are hostile beings lurking in the Backrooms that chase the people who stumble into them, most of the actual sense of fear comes from the uncanniness of the empty spaces that aren’t quite right.
It’s all based on the concept of Liminal Spaces. Again, I don’t have a great sense of what that actually means, but my understanding is that it’s essentially the notion of places that shouldn’t really be scaring, but are when they’re empty because it presents that aforementioned looming sense of ‘Not Quite Right.’ It’s things like empty hallways at schools or hospitals, service corridors in public buildings, and that illusion of infinite repetition from looking up for down a really tall stairwell.
I don’t really understand the definition, but I think I understand the feeling that concept is meant to invoke. Honestly, one of the scariest places I have been is the out-of-the-way hallway where the bathroom is in the mall in my neighbourhood. I’ve been going to that hall since I was kid. It is a immediately familiar place.
But the sense of isolation and being lost that damn hallway creates really gets to me.
Which brings us to the recent movie.
Maybe I do deal with Horror better than expected, because none of the Horror movies I’ve watched recently have actually really scared me. Maybe I’m desensitised more than I was as a kid who refused to watch Horror movies. Maybe I’m just more emotionally mature than I was as a kid.
But I digress.
I didn’t think Backrooms was particularly scary, but it is undeniably uncomfortable. The biggest strength of the movie is less ‘Ahh! A monster’ (though there are some monsters) and, again, more the fact that it absolutely nails that sense of ‘Not Quite Right.’ In fact, that’s sort of the big theme of the movie.
The characters have several discussions about how the Backrooms replicate the real world without really understanding the real world and therefore getting the details wrong and therefore turn things should be familiar and comforting into something strange and alien and uncomfortable.
It strikes a good balance of explaining how the Backrooms work (or at least seem to) without overexplaining what the Backrooms are. The movie did well enough that it’s probably going to get a sequel and one of my big fears about said sequel is over-explaining the Backrooms and therefore stripping them of their unknowable, alien qualities and therefore the thing that makes it scariest.
We’ll see…
To briefly explain the plot without spoiling too much of the details of said plot: Chiwetel Ejiofor (who I recognise best as Mordo from Dr. Strange) plays Clark, the owner of a struggling furniture store who’s in therapy because of his failing marriage.
Backrooms: A24. image via IMDB.
Essentially, he stumbles in the Backrooms through a connection in the basement of his store. He brings along his employees to explore the backrooms, and his sudden disappearance leads his therapist Mary – played by Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve (whom I do not recognise from any preivous role) to follow him into the Backrooms to try to bring him back in the real world.
Since it’s a Horror movie, you can probably expect that things don’t really go well at this point.
Like most Horror movies do, Backrooms utilising the Horror aspects to make a thematic statement about the human condition. Specifically, the Backrooms themselves are used as an instrument for Clark and Mary to explore their own traumas – Clark has a failing business and failing marriage to deal with, Mary has a severely schizophrenic mother.
I won’t spoil any of the specific details, but the Compare and Contrast aspect of how Clark and Mary navigate both the Backrooms and their own trauma is the thematic core of the movie.
I doubt it was on purpose, but I found it really easy to read a critique of Generative A.I. into Backrooms.
At one point, when tying to describe the Backrooms to Mary, Clark likens the way the Backrooms replicate reality without really understanding reality to getting someone with no concept of what a dog is by describing a dog to them. They’d get the general premise – four legs, a tail – right but wouldn’t be able to grasp what makes a dog a dog.
Similarly, the Backrooms can create a yellow room, but that room will have too many corners and doors that don’t go anywhere and chairs on the ceiling, and be inhabited by beings (they’re officially called Still Lifes, but I don’t remember if that name is ever actually used in the movie) who are deep into the uncanny valley: they’re clearly supposed to be human, but they’ve got too many eyes or three faces.
And the characters’ growing obsession with the Backrooms can pretty easily be read as a metaphor for A.I. psychosis…
The original universe itself predates the proliferation of A.I., but the movie came out in 2026, only a couple weeks away from Pope Leo releasing Magnifica humanitas, so A.I. issues must have been on the minds of the production team. But, again, whether they intended for that element to come through is unclear to me.
On the other hand: Death of the Author, Art means what I want it to mean!
I’m joking. Sort of…
On the whole, I think the script of Backrooms is serviceable, but not necessarily more than that. The writing is probably most valuable as a means for us to see more of the Backrooms themselves. The production built 30,000 square feet of practical sets and absolutely nailed the Liminal Space aesthetic. The movie is worth watching at least once just to look at.
The overall production and finished product are particularly impressive for being the directorial debut of Kane Parsons – who was probably the absolute right man for the job. Despite this being his first feature film and Parsons only being 21, he’s one of the most important people in the development of the online Backrooms mythos. He didn’t create the original creepypasta, but he did create the most well-known web series about the Backrooms.
And now he’s just directed a movie that made $400 million on a $10 million dollar budget.
Backrooms is currently streaming and available for digital rental and purchase on various platforms. I watched it on Prime Video (in Canada).
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