This navigation of liminal horror really does feel like the closest thing we’ll get to an onscreen version of House of Leaves in all of its atmospheric eeriness. The experience of treading through that book has had such a deep hold on me. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend it as long as you’re ready to process its baffling and devastating substance with a ton of your energy. It’s the type of sprawling narrative that’s evocative of cosmic horror, a subgenre of horror that scares us with entities that are too vast and incomprehensible for us mortal beings. These entities don’t even have to be inherently malicious. They can simply terrify us because we can’t understand them, because they neutrally exist, because they just are. And that explains so much of what I feel throughout House of Leaves while I’m being guided through these passageways and antechambers that go deep, deep, deep into the darkness—a darkness whose presence should be physically impossible, and yet it defies that concept. And that further explains what I feel throughout Backrooms, which I’m plunging into as someone who’s aware of its 4chan origins and of Kane Parsons’s series of short films on YouTube. I haven’t seen any of those shorts, though, but I do think I’ll have to check them out.
I wouldn’t say this movie locked me up in complete tension the whole time. It wasn’t a completely anxiety-inducing ride like Obsession. But it does drag me into an unsettled state that makes me constantly wonder what will pop up next while we’re inside this strange space. What will emerge from the end of the hallway or from around the nearby corner? What mundane objects will we find strewn around the place or half-buried in the walls? Even just the sickly yellows of this realm give me the creeps. It’s not giving off the comforting air that we’d get if the place was dressed up in, say, a sky blue hue. No, no, this yellow seeps into our skin and our sense of reality, providing one more visual facet that diminishes any calmness we might try to generate. The cinematography certainly makes its own contribution via the first-person POV segments, and honestly, I would have embraced an incarnation of this film that fully commits itself to the found footage format. But what we do get is still successful at amping up the fear factor in a way that shrinks the distance between us viewers and the Backrooms themselves. Shout-out to the opening scene for landing as one of the best examples of that aspect, and it even managed to throw out a jumpscare that got me jolting a little in my seat. I predicted the jumpscare as someone who’s seen these tropes and spatial framings a million times by now, but it’s not like I could tell when it would happen exactly, so it still popped out at me.
I’ll admit that when I’d initially emerged from this movie, it was circling around a 3.5-star rating in my book. But now I’m quickly growing more appreciation for it as I chew over what it has to say about mental health, processing your past and your traumas, taking accountability for your actions and your flaws, and the tragedy of refusing to change because you’re terrified of evolving past this resentful little nest in which you’ve grown quite comfy and in which you take shelter in your lack of self-awareness. It’s interesting to watch how this tale uses Mary and Clark to unpack those ideas, even when there are points where the pacing feels like it’s slowing down somewhat and where I’m itching for us to return to the Backrooms ASAP. There are additionally beats that leave me thinking this could have pushed itself into even more bizarre territory, but what this does remains compelling, and there are certainly some visuals that are sticking with me and trailing a skittering sensation over my skin. Props to Renate Reinsve and Chiwetel Ejiofor for how they match up with the quietly growing suspense as their characters wrestle with the perplexing nature of the Backrooms, and I’ve also got appreciation for Lukita Maxwell (who I always remember from Shrinking) and Finn Bennett. Mark Duplass isn’t in this nearly as much as I’d hoped he would be, but hey, I’m eager for every minute of his limited screentime nonetheless. He knows how to hop into a tale and dial the vibe into something at least a tad weirder.
All in all, now that I’ve had an enjoyable time with Backrooms, I’m keen to take a look at Parsons’s shorts. Kudos to him for what he’s already accomplished before he turns 21 in a few days. And again, if you haven’t picked up House of Leaves yet, I truly do recommend it as long as you’re down for what’s in store. It’s worth drawing the links between that book and this movie, too, including when it comes to an element like the characters hauling a camera along in order to document these befuddling spaces. Parsons hasn’t even read the book, which only makes the similarities all the more fascinating.
My final rating: 4 out of 5 stars
2 Cents Critic 