2026, Kane Parsons (The Backrooms) -- cinema
This movie chilled me and enthralled me. And I imagine that is what some of the characters in the movie felt as well.
This movie is an extreme example of the "don't go into the basement" -- you know you shouldn't go down there, and if you do, something bad will happen. But you go anyway, and the audience yells at you (yes, you have an audience as well) for being so stupid. But... what's down there? Danger! Of course. All the horror of the movie could be washed away by just not going down into the basement!! Well, most.
Many?
I have a pretty good sense of direction, generally better than most people I know. When I emerge from the subway, I always know which cardinal direction I am facing. But, put me into one of those underground malls, with all their weird angles, and corridors looping back on themselves and that sense of direction begins to slowly slip away. If you know the Toronto PATH, you might know what I am talking about.
So, when Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kinky Boots) finds the "soft spot" in the basement of the dying furniture which he runs, and in which he lives, and begins to explore the weird connected rooms and corridors looping back upon themselves, every fibre of my being was screaming "DON'T GO ANY FURTHER !" Oh, I know he was expecting this to be reality, that what he had literally stumbled into would follow the rules of architecture and physics, but I saw the trailers, and also, I already knew this place. The further you go into that place the more likely you are going to go beyond a point from which you can remember the way back. You will most definitely become lost; you will most definitely end up being in there for the rest of your life.
This movie is based on a series of YouTube short films by this film's director Kane Parsons. He in turn drew upon the creepypasta that originated on 4chan with a single image of weird empty yellow rooms with terrible wallpaper and terrible carpet, accompanied by a single paragraph description, mentioning a video-game concept of "noclipping" out of reality. To noclip, in a game, is to accidentally (or intentionally, once enough people learn of the "soft spot") through a barrier, such as a wall or floor, into the spaces outside of the game's content. Sometimes you noclip into a space intentionally built by game developers, but most often you are just breaking the game and end up "falling" forever. Sometimes, you are just suspended ... somewhere. I recall one game where I ended up just under the world map, where my character was swimming. I could hear water, see my character's motions of swimming, but I could not see water nor could I go anywhere. I could see the map just above my head but I could not reach it. I was lost forever. I needed to reload.
Clark should have reloaded. He has noclipped into a place which starts by being familiar (abandoned furniture store) but the further he goes, the less familiar, and the more unnerving it becomes. And there is something in there with him, something that he always ends up fleeing. And yet Clark, an angry selfish man, brings his assistant store manager (really, his only employee with a fancy title) Kat (Lukita Maxwell, Shrinking), and her handy-cam bearing boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms). It should be mentioned that it is the 1990s but the only bearing it has on the movie is the technology, the desire to use the "found footage" motif and to limit communication.
Clark also involves Mary (Renate Reinsve, Handling the Undead), his therapist, who has been constantly reminding Clark that he is stuck, stuck in his anger, stuck in his self-destructive patterns. As a therapist, who also has a book and video tapes, it is her schtick, her selling point, in that only you can choose other doorways in life, but most people keep on walking the same corridors forever. The comparisons are obvious, but handled really really well. Eventually Mary goes to Clark's store to see what he was going on about, before he disappeared. And she finds the entrance, which Clark has conveniently marked out with masking tape, and she finds Clark. It does not go well for either. Mary has her own personal corridors she has been traversing for years and years; Clark's experience exacerbates these and allows ... some closure?
I have recurring dreams. In this writing I have probably mentioned The City before, but there was always one aspect, which is probably inherent to dreaming, and lends itself to what this movie is proposing, but there were the rooms and corridors of my dreams. There is The Apartment, which has many many rooms, connected to short hallways and stairwells. The entry room, with its big bright windows, leads to the kitchen, but off the kitchen, you reach the TV room with its 70s sunken floor and walls of VHS tapes. From there is a hallway that leads to The Kitchen, a massive room from a house that would have staff. I have never been through the door at the far end of The Kitchen. There is the underground shopping concourse, a cramped series of hallways and stalls selling all sorts of food stuffs like cured meat sandwiches and spices & herbs in bags, and dried goods I don't recognize. There are no straight lines, everything is jammed in together, people shouting, people hawking goods; I never find what I am there for, but I just love the experience of my visits. And there is The Factory, a falling down abandoned space I enter at the waterfront, but then find my way up but into what, I am never sure. Its always via weird tight hallways, stinking rooms full of junk, jammed doors, crawling over refuse to get ... somewhere.
Backrooms exposits that the rooms are memories of real spaces, but the idea that memories are built on how much you forget. Dreams are built on what you remember, but also .... on much more. The movie never explains what they are, why they are really there, who created them, what created them, but introduces it all without any real satisfying ending. We just wake up when the credits roll, confused, disoriented, disturbed and more than a little excited by it all.
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