Backrooms

“Is someone there?”

A liminal space is roughly defined as uncanny valley imagery representing “in-betweenness” through the use of mundane yet deceptively unsettling transitional locations that are devoid of people: stairwells, roads, corridors, hotels, office buildings. For a modern audience, Backrooms may be the crowning example of this particular branch of understated horror.

I was eager to see this, and glad that I was able to watch it on the big screen. Because I had a feeling that this movie would be big on atmosphere, the kind of thing dark spacious movie theaters really enhance. And I wasn’t wrong. This is a very effective and deftly made film, though I imagine that it (like some of the movies it’s clearly drawing influence from) will prove divisive among filmgoers.

The plot is fairly simple: A man named Clark makes a bizarre discovery in the lower level of his unsuccessful furniture store. He finds a door, an ephemeral partition that leads into the titular Backrooms, a labyrinth made up of mundane yet surreal rooms and passages that get increasingly convoluted the further it is explored. Clark, who once aspired to be an architect, becomes deeply invested in puzzling his way through this extra-dimensional realm. And his fixation draws other people in his life to the Backrooms as well, most notably his therapist, Mary Kline.

Like Obsession, Backrooms is another very successful horror movie that not only instills faith in the genre, but injects a fair bit into the movie industry as well. These are two very cool movies that just happen to have been helmed by guys who made their bones as YouTube video creators. Kane Parsons, the director of Backrooms, has been getting a lot of praise for making such a potent piece of cinema at only 20 years-old; dude was even younger when he worked on the original Backrooms videos.

The “backrooms” began as a concept through internet creepypastas, postmodern urban legends that go viral online; think Slender Man. Many people have had their own interpretations of it, but I believe Kane Parsons (of Kane Pixels) was the one who created the first found footage content based around the idea, which is what this movie is primarily based on.

It’s an enticing concept beautifully realized in this movie. Not only is the same basic idea of Parsons’s web-series recaptured, but the writing by Will Soodik does a lot to tether it to a narrative wrapped up in themes of memory, pattern recognition, mental illness, abuse, repetition and liminality. All of which adds to the ambiguity rather than robbing the film of it by providing too much context.

According to Wikipedia, “Liminality” (an anthropological term) is "the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way."

This phenomenon is reflected by both of the film’s lead characters: Clark is an unsuccessful man struggling to deal with a harsh transitional period in life, while Mary is a successful woman who is quietly haunted by her own lingering past traumas. It’s also reflected by the Backrooms itself — an ever-expanding environment that appears constantly on the verge between one state of being and transforming into something else.

The movie is set in the year 1990, which gives it a good excuse to utilize a lot of the found footage elements that were present in the web-series. I think we all remember the deluge of found footage movies that had a grip on the horror genre for about half a decade or more. They were all clearly trying to ape the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of The Blair Witch Project. I think Backrooms might be the first one made with a clear understanding of why that movie was effective and doesn't rest everything on the shaky cam POV aesthetic. The horror isn't derived from jump scares or gore, even if both are present here and there. It’s derived from the creeping and intriguing ambiguity, and the anticipation the viewer feels in the face of it.

Like The Blair Witch Project, Backrooms will likely face criticism for what it doesn’t do. The lack of answers, the vague antagonistic force(s), the slow and deliberate pace, the limitations it sets on itself. But it also succeeds in the same way that movie does, by understanding and exploiting our innate fear of the unknown. The utter anxiety of not knowing, and the mind-bending horror of finding out even a little bit.

Doors and Tunnels:

* I read somewhere that Kane Parsons wants to direct an adaptation of the video game Portal, another story about a hidden underground facility full of elaborately shifting rooms. There are a handful of scenes in Backrooms that definitely convinced me he’d be a good fit for that.

* The Blair Witch Project was the main thing I kept coming back to as far as discernible references, but there were also parts of the movie that I found reminiscent of The Shining, Primer, Being John Malkovich or a dystopian film called High Rise that came out a few years ago. David Lynch fans might find the vibe familiar, as well. And while I definitely see elements of Portal, I couldn’t help but also be reminded of the Silent Hill games, what with the closed-off nightmare location that horrifically reflects those who enter it.

* The Backrooms have been likened, even by Parsons himself, to the phenomena people sometimes encounter in glitchy video games, where character models (either NPCs or the actual player) will "clip" through the surface of the game world, getting stuck in walls or floors or falling completely through either into a featureless limbo they can't escape from. Sometimes, if the game is in a poor enough condition, the actual game world will crash out and start to resemble one of these uncanny valley liminal spaces.

* ASYNC, the briefly seen company attempting to monitor the Backrooms, also brought to mind a Russian novel called Roadside Picnic. In that story, scientists and mercenary types risk their lives to explore certain areas on Earth that were left irreversibly altered and extremely dangerous to inhabit in the aftermath of a mysterious alien invasion.

* Mary is the author of a self-help book as well as a therapist. She initially reminded me of Marianne Williamson.

* This is the first movie I’ve seen Renate Reinsve star in. Makes me want to seek out some of her other roles. I believe she’s known for acting in some pretty heavy dramas, which may be why this is my first time seeing her. Heavy dramas sometimes feel scarier to me than horror movies.

* The ones who probably deserve the most praise are the production designers who brought so many of these off-kilter, maze-like sets to life.

Quotes:

Dr. Mary Kline: “We all have our loops. Our habits. Behaviors that keep us walking in circles. Reaching for the same solutions over and over again. Thinking each time will take you somewhere new, but they don’t. And still, it’s the neutral pathway of least resistance. A path you made. It’s the one that kept you safe when you were a child. You learned to push people away before they could hurt you. And now, as an adult, you’re still stuck right where you started. Alone.”

Clark: “I’ve been here every night since I found the place and I still barely scratched the surface.”

Clark: “Keep up. It only gets better.”

Clark: “All these places and buildings, rooms, misremembering themselves. It’s a real mess, but also beautiful in a way, no?”

I really dig this. Great performances, impressive filmmaking, and a unique concept that did not disappoint. Five out of five disturbing liminal spaces.