Film Review: Backrooms [Warning, Mild Spoilers]

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I Don't Like It In Here.

Backrooms appears to be one of a few films that have been responsible for breaking the internet recently, and punctuating a new state of affairs in which big production studios no longer seem to be necessary for artistic visions to see the light of day. The film is a psychological vision quest of a thriller that focuses on a disgruntled furniture store manager named Clark.

Kicked out of his own home for a drinking problem that remedies his frustration and resentment for not pursuing a career as a respected architect, Clark looks to battle his demons with the help of a successful psychologist named Mary. Here we are presented with the typical, self-assured shrink who adorns insufferable self-help books and lends her soothing voice to promotional materials that promise the unlocking of fresh new avenues for us sufferers of life.

Yet, Clark's dissatisfaction with the hand that he's been dealt is put on the back burner when he discovers a mysterious crack of light through a wall in the basement of his furniture store. He enters this newfound doorway, not like Lucy discovering Narnia, but rather like the kids of Hogwarts passing through Platform 9 and 3/4.

Alice, Meet Rabbit Hole

Clarks comes to find that this invisible doorway leads to a vast abandoned office space consisting of various rooms, endless hallways, corridors, stairwells, and storerooms. Each new room has the air of a modern art installation, providing always new entry points which present new pathways that both extend and yet also always connect to new and previously visited rooms. In exploring this vast labyrinth, Clark simultaneously, and metaphorically, explores the avenues of his mind, which is precisely what I believe the Backrooms serve to represent. In both exploring and attempting to explain this area, and by extension, his mind, Clark comes to demonstrate the parameters of the so-called impossible profession of psychoanalysis.

All of this is expressed very precisely in a key scene in which Clark kidnaps Mary in an attempt to explain the bizarre area they find themselves in. However, in his words, attempting to explain the Backrooms (one's mind) is like trying to explain what a dog is like to someone who has no experience of one, and then expecting them to explain it to someone else. What this leads to is a key omission from Mary: she cannot help/fix Clark, or anyone for that matter. This realisation speaks to the curious nature of the human mind, our unique lived experience, and the limitations of our language to express it. I wouldn't for one moment be surprised if one of the creators of this film happened to be well-versed in Lacanian psychoanalysis, the backrooms providing the known, and yet suggesting the unknown, thus presenting middle possibilities that hint at the Real.

Even the main actors in this drama serve as Jungian archetypes in a certain way, with each presenting their experiences and interpretations with domain-specific signifiers. Clark is the architect/merchant, capable of establishing an understanding of structures and layouts with his particular lens in a bid to find patterns and thus produce understanding. Mary, as the psychologist, enters at a different point through an analysis of language and behaviour. Whilst the scientist completes the trinity through empirical data, which hopes to synthesise everything. And while this presents a hierarchy, they are all equal in their ignorance and their inability to reconcile their respective set of signifiers to arrive at a common understanding. These, I claim, are the backrooms that are continuously created through our relational networks. Endless networks, indeed.

Get Me Out...

Keeping with the tone and general themes of this offering, Backrooms is a film that needs to be experienced rather than explained. It's a film that takes the more subtle approach to scaring the audience, letting the empty corridors and rooms do the heavy lifting, with ambient music that gradually builds tension and intrigue around every corner, matched only by deafening silences that tease with the possibility of terror. The 90's aesthetic also lends to the overall disturbing look and feel of the film, those unsightly, dull carpets, old-style furniture, and paint jobs amplifying the sense of decay, mystery, and madness. This is indeed a creepy offering that shows that less is more, and yet also that more is less. The audience may be right to feel confused, but through this film, we gain an interesting perspective on ourselves, or rather, the mysterious workings of the backrooms, which are our minds. I need a nap.