Plot
Clarke is a massively repressed individual, clearly living a life he hates. He wanted to be an architect, but instead he runs a second hand furniture store.
Having recently had a near break through in therapy, where he discovers he may be the cause of his marriage breakdown, he unwittingly discovers a path to another dimension in his stores basement.
Within the dimension, there are a large, seemingly endless office rooms, where dangerous creatures may lie in every corner.
When he seemingly goes missing one day, Mary, his therapist goes searching for him – and heads into the backrooms herself.
Direction
Directed by then nineteen year old Kane Parsons, it is an incredible achievement, and follows on from his YouTube series.
Starting with a first person point of view, we get plenty of sound camera choices, as well as a true feeling of the size of the ‘backrooms’ throughout, with massive sets, and limited use of AI or CGI. Directors three times his age haven’t done so good!
Cast
Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, and Renate Reinsve plays Mary.
Other cast include Mark Duplass as Phil, Finn Bennett as Bobby and Lukita Maxwell as Kat.
Breakdown
I went in blind with this one, having only heard so much ‘about it’ but not “about it” so to speak. Boy I’m glad I did!
The film stars with a ‘cold open’ so to speak, where an unseen character named Naren is within the backrooms, he is speaking to “standard” and we get a brilliant jump scare.
For the next half an hour we spend getting to know the two leads. We have Clarke, who has recently gone through a marriage breakdown (we assume divorce, but there is small implications throughout that it is more sinister), due to the choices he made in life. Instead of becoming an architect, he bought a furniture store and blames her for never helping him achieve his goes.
Mary is an empathetic listener, who due to her own past traumas, which we see in a series of flashbacks, help him explore his feelings. I loved this opening role play, and really found it a fascinating venture into both their personalities. The therapy advise she gives to him, as well as in monologues narration throughout is quite deep and even more impressive that it was written by someone so young.
Clarke at no point is seen to be a character worth empathy towards. Following on from his therapy session, we get a slight bit of comedy while he is filming a commercial for his store, but immediately is shown to be aggressive to his staff (not even both are his staff, one is – the other is her boyfriend!).
Clark finally finds the backrooms at the half hour mark, and here’s where the film struggled a little. He becomes quite obsessed with them, talking in therapy to Mary, and eventually talking his employee Kat and her boyfriend Bobby into coming into the rooms with him. When they all go missing (rip Kat and Bobby) – this (has?) Mary go in search of Clark. She finds the backrooms by chance and goes in search. I didn’t really buy this as something someone would do – but possibly due to her own mothers mental instability that we see in flashbacks, this causes her to want to?
When Mary comes across Clarke in the backrooms, even though he has been missing for ‘days’ – his psyche, and his knowledge of the backrooms, makes it feel like he has been there for years, if not decades (I mean, how long would you take to find out you can eat the AI slop people sitting around doing nothing??)
Within this time together, we get more of a sense of how much of an antagonist that Clarke is, (and we only feel a little sorry for him when he realises what he is).
Mary’s eventual escape from the backrooms (and away from Pirate Clarke, played by 7’7 actor Robert Bobroczkyi) is quite frightening. She is eventually saved by what we can assume are the ‘Standard’ that Naren speaks to in the beginning. This is again, a disappointing moment within the film as they never truly explain what the backrooms are; rather given the flimsy excuse… we don’t know. This is a pet peeve of mine, where the filmmakers have created a mythical world, but you can’t explain the mythology of its creation.
Overall
Pretty solid horror/thriller, with a great concept, some interesting characters (with brilliant performances by Ejiofor and Reinsve).
The set designs and the camera work are more impressive given director Parson’s youth. I wish him nothing but the best for his career.
A disappointing end, that doesn’t explain the mythology – I just wanted to know why!
3.5/5
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