By Dolores Quintana
Empty spaces filled with fear. The fear of a liminal space, or a place that is abandoned or empty, is a lot like one of human beings’ most popular fears, the fear of the dark. You aren’t really afraid of the empty space or the dark; you are afraid of what might happen or what might be in that darkness or unseen in that seemingly abandoned place. Another fear is that the space might be infinite and inescapable.
Backrooms, the first feature film by Kane Parsons, a 20-year-old YouTube creator, is based on his web series of the same name, which he has been working on and creating videos for since he was sixteen years old. The Backrooms are an Internet aesthetic that started on the 4Chan message board in 2019, when a photo of an empty and ominous room at a Dutch angle with hideous yellow wallpaper was posted.
The beauty of Kane Parsons’ film, based on the photo and his series of shorts and the web series he created, is that you don’t really need the backstory of where The Backrooms came from or the meaning of it for the film to be effective and chilling. The factory of fear between your ears, aka your imagination, can do that quite nicely with what Parsons has assembled in this cinematic adaptation.
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell star in the film about a man with a failing furniture business and his fading prospects for a happy life, who discovers The Backrooms and begins to explore them after he finds a strange doorway.
Parsons wisely starts the film in a very normal and recognizable place that people can relate to, with a sense of humor, and then guides them into the unknown. Ejiofor’s character, Clark, is an everyman who seems to find a new purpose as he tries to map The Backrooms and begins to bring people into the space. Things seem jolly right up until the moment that they are not.
In a classic moment of suspense, Hitchcock style, there is a scene where it is quite clear that something bad is going to happen, so you sit with that knowledge in your brain that is screaming internally at the characters on the screen, but you are helpless as they are, and when the terror is delivered, it is so much more frightening with your foreknowledge. This reviewer screamed even though they knew precisely what was going to occur.
One of the things that makes human beings what they are, a successful species with the ability to problem solve and grow, is our imaginations. But imagination is a double-edged sword; the same power that gives you the ability to see a solution in your mind’s eye is also the same ability that can scare the living daylights out of you.
The actors in the film do a wonderful job of being ordinary people. They aren’t heroes or geniuses; they are average people in an extraordinary situation that quickly gets out of their control. In this, Backrooms has an aspect of cosmic horror, because the rooms with weird geometry and sickly yellow wallpaper might be infinite or something that the human mind simply can’t accept or understand. It suggests something akin to the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” that simply being exposed and trapped in such a place might be enough to make you lose your mind.
A personal note: this author once got trapped in an underground mall in Toronto, Canada. What we mean by trapped is that after opening a door, there was simply no way out, but to go forward. The mall was nondescript and almost totally empty, and there was no direction on how to leave except for a sign that said,” Go this way.” All of the stores were closed, and the walk got longer and longer, with no cell phone service and a vapid muzak playing on invisible speakers.
After a while, panic started to settle in the chest, until we emerged from the subterranean space into a huge and dark hotel. It was in a different part of the city, and there was no idea of how long the walk actually was. It felt like a purgatory of bland step after step, not knowing if you had suddenly slipped through a crack in reality.
Kane Parsons takes the fear that every human being has and works lo-fi magic with it. The four main actors, Ejiofor and Reinsve, with Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell, give performances that are so relatable and comforting that when, after the chuckles subside, fear can squeeze your heart that much more effectively.
Parsons does an incredible job of disguising what could be a limitless evil or unending trap as something that looks unremarkable, but just a little bit off. It is what he suggests that is so terrifying. It is a marvel of minimalist horror, with the potential to grow like a strangling vine, either with future installments of the film or within your brain in a well-lit room or in the dark.
It has the potential to seed your mind with nightmares.
