Backrooms (M) – 105 minutes

A supernatural horror thriller, Backrooms is a phenomenon that has grown through the internet.

Co-writer and director of the film Kane Parsons was just 16 when he used open-source software to create what was initially intended as a visual effects test.

The nine minute short The Backrooms (Found Footage) was uploaded to YouTube in 2022.

In its first two weeks, what was dubbed the scariest video on the internet garnered 20 million views. 

While still in high school, Parsons began expanding the concept of his initial clip, creating 22 additional episodes.

To date, the web series has amassed well in excess of 200 million views.

It is all about pervasive, infectious dread in a space one passes through, often captured in images of man-made environments without people.

These spaces are ripe with the uneasy sense that something within them is off or wrong.

The desolate settings become a trap.

And so we come to Backrooms, the movie, which Parsons made as a 20-year-old. 

A failed architect, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) manages a struggling furniture store. 

He is also seeing psychiatrist Dr Mary Klein (Renate Reinsve) – who has her own cross to bear – to try to come to terms with his failed marriage.

Kline suggests role play to help Clark move past the moment his student lawyer wife kicked him out of the house.

He reluctantly participates, but it only serves to enrage him.

Meanwhile, Clark is experiencing problems with the electricals in the store. Lights are constantly flickering and the bills are unusually high.

Nor can an electrician explain unusual switches installed at an angle on the circuit board, seemingly as an afterthought.

With the issue not identified, Clark decides to investigate for himself, which sees him stay overnights at the store.

With the lights continuing to play up and even the TV he is watching switching off, it leads him back down to the circuit board in the room at the bottom of the stairs.

That is when he notices a glowing slit in the wall.

At that point, he is literally able to phase through the wall. In other words, he passes directly through the wall – being a solid object – without causing himself harm or damaging the wall.

And that is where a parallel universe, with furniture piled up in clumps, opens up for him, which eventually leads him to encounter some very unusual and scary entities.

Not just him, mind you. Also, his assistant and her boyfriend, who begins capturing the seemingly endless array of rooms and unusual angles therein on his video camera.

In the wake of her own childhood trauma, Clark’s psychiatrist also falls prey to what becomes a horror show.

Backrooms deals with off the wall material.

Employing handheld video recordings, as well as more traditional movie making techniques, it is disconcerting, just as it is designed to be.

I even experienced one jump out of my seat moment.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is compelling as the highly wired and disturbed furniture store manager and patient whose life is spiralling.

There is a decided vulnerability about Renate Reinsve’s portrayal as the more measured therapist, with a troubling back story.

Backrooms is conceived as a head scratcher, without a soft landing.

Strong on highlighting visual anomalies, curiosity draws you in.

Then, the film ramps up the unusual, the bizarre and the disconcerting, complete with appropriate sound effects.

I appreciate why such a movie will have particular appeal to a younger audience.

It has cult following written all over it.

The picture has already made history as the highest-grossing original horror debut, with Parsons the youngest person to ever have a number one film globally. 

Rated M, Backrooms scores a 7½ out of 10.