Backrooms (15)

Failed architect Clark runs a cheap, pirate-themed furniture warehouse and showroom, Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire, on a soulless plot in Santa Clara Valley. Late one night, he stumbles upon an invisible portal in the store's sublevel to an endless maze of unsettling office spaces bathed in fluorescent yellow lights. Clark confides this outlandish discovery to his therapist, Dr Mary Kline, who is and sceptical about the existence of an alternate dimension.

LondonNet Film Review

Backrooms (15) Film Review from LondonNet

YouTube is changing the way we consume TV and film content so it’s inevitable that big personalities, who have amassed millions of followers on the video sharing platform, should want to cross the rubicon and make movies for the big screen. The Philippou Brothers aka RackaRacka tingled spines with supernatural horrors Talk To Me and Bring Her Back, Mark Fischbach aka Markiplier recently self-released the breakout horror hit Iron Lung and Curry Barker, one half of sketch comedy duo that’s a bad idea, is one of this year’s breakout stars with his diabolically bad romance Obsession…

Expanded from popular YouTuber Kane Parsons’ viral web series, Backrooms is a hypnotic and visually jaw-dropping descent into mind-bending madness in the company of Oscar nominees Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Even when the storytelling becomes wilfully abstract to the point of obfuscation, a pervading sense of discomfort is undeniable like an delicious itch you can’t quite scratch.

Failed architect Clark (Ejiofor) runs a cheap, pirate-themed furniture warehouse and showroom, Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, on a soulless plot in Santa Clara Valley. He has no passing custom and one employee Kat (Lukita Maxwell), whose boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett) acts as cameraman for the store’s low-rent TV ads to compete with their wild west-themed rival, Big Wayne’s Furniture Barn. Electricity supply to the store is patchy and Clark stays late on the premises to determine the source of the fault. During one of these night-time sorties, he stumbles upon an invisible portal in the store’s sublevel to an endless maze of unsettling office spaces bathed in fluorescent yellow lights.

Clark confides this outlandish discovery to his therapist, Dr Mary Kline (Reinsve), who is and sceptical about the existence of an alternate dimension. “I’m going to come back here with proof and you’re going to owe me a serious apology,” he barks, storming out of her office. Soon after, Clark leaves a cryptic message on Mary’s answering machine – “I opened the window. I won’t be coming back!”- and she heads to Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire in search of answers. She is unprepared for the disorienting labyrinth of impossibly constructed rooms and corridors that lurks on the other side of a wall.

Backrooms opens with a tour-de-force sequence shot on old school handheld video camera that tees up a satisfying jump scare and teases the staggering production design of Danny Vermette, who evokes a weirdly off-kilter world with nods to MC Escher’s optical illusions. Reinsve and Ejiofor submit completely to the filmmaker’s diabolical distortions and the 110-minute running time passes surprisingly quickly once Clark makes his initial foray through the portal. Successive visits to the fluorescent fantasia are filled with heart-stopping surprises. Even when I didn’t understand Parsons’ intentions, and the film’s final stretch is bewildering, I was riveted.

– Kim Hu