The Backrooms were created in 2019 by an anonymous 4chan user. This 'place' was described as an endless, yellow-carpeted maze of office rooms that you could accidentally enter by 'noclipping' out of reality. In 2022, Kane Parsons created a short film named The Backrooms (Found Footage) for his YouTube channel, Kane Pixels. This quickly gained almost 80 million views, along with countless more iterations and theories about this liminal space. Boundless lore was created, and this idea was launched to popularity levels never before seen. This inevitably caught the attention of the film industry, and in 2023, A24 announced the Backrooms movie. This movie carries the legacy of Parsons himself and the anonymous 4chan user, incredibly well.
This idea of the Backrooms has constantly been evolving since its birth in 2019. This idea originated as simply a liminal space - an in-between place - creating a feeling of the uncanny valley - a feeling of familiarity yet something not feeling quite right. Kane Parsons evolved this into a feeling of not being alone, yet there's no escape. There may be, and likely is, a mysterious, unknown creature around every corner. This movie evolves the original idea even more, bringing these creatures - and the Backrooms themselves - to life as imperfect copies, or 'memories' of people and things from the real world. I, for one, am quite conflicted on this idea.
While the lore expansion of these creatures creates an interesting concept and is played quite well in this movie, it feels as if it takes away some of the magic of Parsons' original idea by personifying these creatures. What makes the creatures in the 2022 short film feel so much more sinister is that ambiguity. We hardly see any of the creature; the most we get is a terrifying shrill and a few glimpses at this tall, black, wiry figure bounding towards our main character. The fact that we don't know what these creatures are also means that we don't know what they're capable of, which is exactly where the horror comes from.
Aside from this, they do an incredible job at bringing the Backrooms to the big screen and recreating them almost exactly. You see this so much in the found footage moments, in which these scenes have the same graininess and point-of-view perspective as the original found footage short film. At no point does this feel 'glammed up' for cinema, which is a very real concern in any kind of adaptation. However, I'm completely sure that this is almost exactly Kane Parsons' vision in every single detail.
The way this opens immediately establishes the same feeling as Parsons' short film. Everything is exactly the same and gives us that perfect sense of the uncanny valley. However, they evolve this in such an interesting way that the short film didn't until we encountered the danger. This opening scene doesn't just feel like something is strange and unfamiliar, but also immediately wrong. This is the same sort of feeling that Curry Barker evokes in many moments of Obsession. (To read our full Obsession review, click here, and to see how it links with Backrooms, click here)
I feel very conflicted about the creatures, mostly due to how they decided to show them. I have no problem with the concept of these copies, almost like Us (2019); however, I don't think they executed it quite as well as they could have. This problem mostly lies in Clark's copy. At first, it seemed perfect. Clark's copy was framed either from afar, shrouded in darkness, or at least partially covered. I thought this was incredible, as it still keeps some amount of ambiguity around this creature, as well as being very reminiscent of how the original Backrooms creatures were shot. However, later we see its face in full view, and it takes away any sense of ambiguity within the viewer's mind, ultimately causing it to look somewhat comedic with its exaggerated features.
One moment I did love, however, was when we saw Mary's childhood home before the camera moved down through the floor, showing a copy of this exact room. The camera keeps moving down through floor upon floor and getting more disjointed as we go, until we reach the most deteriorated one yet. This reminded me of asking an AI image creation software to replicate the same image 100 times; it gets worse throughout, causing the final image to be completely unrecognisable and simply terrible.
I must give Chiwetel Ejiofor his flowers, as he plays this character incredibly well. This very interestingly narcissistic drunk, who's convinced nothing is really his fault. His adoration for the Backrooms is fascinating. It's the first place he feels as though he's in control of everybody and everything around him. He never has to face any consequences, or so he thinks.
This ends in such an interesting way. It's both very open-ended while still feeling like a complete, wrapped-up story. We have absolutely no idea - not even a hint - of what will possibly happen to Mary, and we suddenly cut to seeing just how large the Backrooms really are. We see a copy of every establishing shot we've seen throughout the movie, allowing us to see almost the entire city that's been replicated. Then we see Mary's copy. This moment somewhat also reminded me of Us (2019) and its underground tunnels. It seems as if these copies live almost the same lives as their overground counterparts, just without any semblance of a soul or feeling.
No AI was used in writing this article.