Like its many corridors and rooms, Backrooms is infinitely watchable.
Liminalism is this generation’s art form. It encapsulates some of what people in their 20s and under are experiencing. It’s about the places in between, about being lost even when we’re right there. It’s a bit of a parallel to mental health and how we don’t fit in, even when we do. By that virtue its muted colors and right angles make everything almost beautifully normal, and yet completely out of place.
Backrooms takes that design language and throws it onto the big screen, making it both bombastic in some respects and mind-bendingly plain in others, all on purpose. It’s almost therapy, which is why so many are connecting with it in different ways.
Even the 90s setting is a perfect way to keep things lo-fi and grounded, and because that decade is now just out of reach it makes it all the more impactful to both remember and worry about being remembered.
That art and design tied directly to its characters and performance; they go hand-in-hand, with the characters fitting within different aspects of the art form. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Clark is a failed architect, and so he’s not only drawn into the space, mapping it out over and over, but he appreciates that it’s a failure itself. Renate Reinsve’s Mary, a psychiatrist, does her best to try and help Clark but ultimately it’s her own internalizations that fail her, leaving her feeling trapped in an endless space herself. It’s great character development, with even better character arcs as Clark and Mary split the film in half, constantly weaving back and forth into each other’s lives for ultimately similar reasons: they want to know who they are, and so do we. We eventually care about each individual we see in the film, even the bit actors.
I guess all that combined is the real question that the film poses: what do we remember, how do we remember it, and what will people remember about us?
I’ve watched Backrooms on big screens and small, and every single time I do I find something new that draws me in again, and something new that I’ll remember.
RATING: 4/5
Backrooms is directed by Kane Parsons and Distributed by A24. This review was done based on a screener sent to the reviewer by the Distributor (as well as viewings in a theater and at home). Read about our review and rating process here — Review Process
