What evil lurks in the drabbest of interiors?
The meme-rooted is the latest movie to pull its mounting horrors out of liminal spaces. released earlier this year, was set entirely in a subway corridor. In 鈥淏ackrooms,鈥� a struggling furniture salesperson discovers beneath his store an underground labyrinth, all lined with yellow wallpapered walls and fluorescent lighting.
Where 鈥淏补肠办谤辞辞尘蝉鈥� came from is more interesting 鈥� and potentially meaningful 鈥� than the result. The movie, directed by 20-year-old YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Kane Parsons, is a fitfully unsettling nightmare that never convincingly builds beyond its creepy, dated-decor premise.
But the 鈥淏补肠办谤辞辞尘蝉鈥� backstory is more intriguing. In 2019, an anonymous post on 4chan creepypasta 鈥� an online repository for internet-created urban legends 鈥� provided the initial image of the seemingly infinite Backrooms with a caption describing 鈥渘othing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz.鈥�
Like many others, Parsons 鈥� who has posted under 鈥淜ane Pixels鈥� 鈥� picked up the idea and ran with it. His YouTube series expanded on the 4chan post, adding a found footage approach. Eventually, A24 greenlit his movie, the big-screen product of an internet-born concept.
But while the hive mind of the internet can produce some glorious things, movies require closer to a single author. And 鈥淏ackrooms,鈥� written by Will Soodik and produced by Osgood Perkins, struggles to retrofit a compelling story to match its disquietingly banal imagery.
Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is the not-exactly-proud owner of Cap鈥檔 Clark鈥檚 Ottoman Empire, a sad and empty furniture store located in a 1990s strip mall. He has plenty of concerns 鈥� his failed architect aspirations, the end of his marriage, any customers at all 鈥� but unexplained electric troubles at the store also nag him. The lights keep flickering.
When Clark inspects the circuit breaker, there are odd, irregular breakers at the bottom of the panel. Who put them there? What are they for? If there’s one thing 鈥淏补肠办谤辞辞尘蝉鈥� gets spot on, it’s the mysteries of the circuit breaker. One night, Clark goes looking in the store鈥檚 lower floor when he unwittingly passes right through the wall, and into the Backrooms.
Wonderland it is not. The seemingly never-ending chambers almost resemble vacant, nondescript office spaces. But they鈥檙e stranger, like art installation versions of office space. There are piles of furniture, shrunken doors and disturbingly random things like a stop sign or a cardboard cutout with a cassette player saying hello in different languages. Clark later describes the rooms as though they were made 鈥渂y a bunch of construction workers on acid.鈥�
The uncanny dimensions and strange recesses of modern workplaces have been a common motif lately, from 鈥淪everance鈥� to 鈥淭he Chair Company.鈥� And it鈥檚 hard not to see the endless iterations of the Backrooms as a metaphor for the internet itself.
But Parsons pushes the setting into a psychological realm. One of the only other characters we see Clark interact with before he grows obsessed with exploring the rooms is his therapist, Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve). 鈥淲e all have our loops, our habits,鈥� she tells him in a session.
The subterranean labyrinth increasingly begins to resemble a warped version of Clark鈥檚 own looped psychology. Its many doors go deeper into his psyche, and Mary (whose new book is titled 鈥淭he Window Within鈥�) becomes trapped too.
As a horror, fluorescent-lit riff on Michel Gondry鈥檚 鈥淓ternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,鈥� 鈥淏补肠办谤辞辞尘蝉鈥� doesn鈥檛 quite work. While the movie finds a potentially insightful pathway to a story, it can鈥檛 bridge its very physical, wall-to-wall-carpeted labyrinth with Clark鈥檚 mental state. A movie with so many doors ultimately can’t find the right one.
Despite a paper-wall-thin concept, both Ejiofor and Reinsve give 鈥淏补肠办谤辞辞尘蝉鈥� some depth. has almost always been a supremely level-headed screen presence, but here embraces a latent capacity for fevered mania. Reinsve, the star of and proves especially absorbing in her first horror film. She gives the movie a slinky intelligence.
But the real star is Danny Vermette’s production design. Banal and bizarre at once, the Backrooms serve as a mysterious rabbit hole. Horror films have long found trouble down the stairs, but the movies 鈥� like 鈥� seem to be digging even deeper. It’s no wonder the movie gets lost down there, too.
鈥淏ackrooms,鈥� an A24 release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language and some violent content/bloody images. Running time: 105 minutes. Two stars out of four.
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