BACKROOMS
5.3 / 10
Backrooms is a slow burn that ultimately underdelivers. It understands mood, but not story, fizzling out from a lack of narrative cohesion and resolution.
Directed by 20-year-old YouTube wunderkind Kane Parsons, Backrooms is A24’s feature adaptation of the mega-viral web series, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, and Mark Duplass. It also boasts a who’s who of producers, including James Wan (Saw), Shawn Levy (Deadpool), and Dan Levine (Arrival).
I’ve been up in small-town Northern California most of this month, dog-sitting for my folks, and this is my third consecutive indie horror review. For Hokum, I was the only person in the audience. For Obsession, there were four or five others. Backrooms was virtually sold out — and school doesn’t get out for summer until tomorrow. Clearly, the buzz is strong. But the buzz may be stronger than the movie itself.
The atmospherics are effective, with strong music and sound design, but much of the film feels derivative. The backrooms themselves are heavily Severance-coded, with hints of Jamiroquai and The Rehearsal. While I appreciated the first act’s slow build as it established character, location, and mood, the longer the film went on, the more it fell apart.
The problem is, Backrooms is basically ALL atmosphere, with faint gestures toward inner psychology and transdimensional world-building. There’s plenty of mood, but little internal logic tying these spaces together.
The original web series was inspired by creepypasta, horror folklore virally passed around the Internet in places like the Paranormal subreddit, which I love. Unfortunately, the feature can’t quite escape those origins. It feels like a pastiche of strong ideas without a collective thread pulling them into a cohesive whole.
This isn’t a poorly made film. It’s a poorly resolved one. There’s real atmosphere, real audience interest, and a director with obvious visual instincts, but as a feature narrative, Backrooms never achieves coherence.
As we were walking out, one of the teens behind us said, “That was the worst movie I ever saw. I want to see Obsession.”
I feel ya, kid. My score: 5.3 out of 10.
Directed by 20-year-old YouTube wunderkind Kane Parsons, Backrooms is A24’s feature adaptation of the mega-viral web series, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, and Mark Duplass. It also boasts a who’s who of producers, including James Wan (Saw), Shawn Levy (Deadpool), and Dan Levine (Arrival).
I’ve been up in small-town Northern California most of this month, dog-sitting for my folks, and this is my third consecutive indie horror review. For Hokum, I was the only person in the audience. For Obsession, there were four or five others. Backrooms was virtually sold out — and school doesn’t get out for summer until tomorrow. Clearly, the buzz is strong. But the buzz may be stronger than the movie itself.
The atmospherics are effective, with strong music and sound design, but much of the film feels derivative. The backrooms themselves are heavily Severance-coded, with hints of Jamiroquai and The Rehearsal. While I appreciated the first act’s slow build as it established character, location, and mood, the longer the film went on, the more it fell apart.
The problem is, Backrooms is basically ALL atmosphere, with faint gestures toward inner psychology and transdimensional world-building. There’s plenty of mood, but little internal logic tying these spaces together.
The original web series was inspired by creepypasta, horror folklore virally passed around the Internet in places like the Paranormal subreddit, which I love. Unfortunately, the feature can’t quite escape those origins. It feels like a pastiche of strong ideas without a collective thread pulling them into a cohesive whole.
This isn’t a poorly made film. It’s a poorly resolved one. There’s real atmosphere, real audience interest, and a director with obvious visual instincts, but as a feature narrative, Backrooms never achieves coherence.
As we were walking out, one of the teens behind us said, “That was the worst movie I ever saw. I want to see Obsession.”
I feel ya, kid. My score: 5.3 out of 10.