Creepy but shallow
Film critic Jason Evans is here to tell you everything you need to know about movies in less time than it takes to get lost in an office building. His reviews are exactly 100 words long (99 is too short, while 101 is just excessive). Here is his 100-word review of Backrooms.
The Premise: Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a frustrated architect
who is working as the manager of a discount furniture store. He is separated
from his wife and battling alcoholism. His visits with psychiatrist Dr. Mary Klein
(Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value) are doing little to turn things around. One
night Clark notices the lights flickering inside the store and when he goes
into the basement to investigate he finds a hidden passageway in the walls. It
takes him into what appears to be an endless maze of bizarrely shaped rooms,
corridors, and hallways, many of which are full of strange objects that seem to
be embedded into the ceiling, floor, and walls. What Clark does not know is why
it is all there… and that there could be danger lurking around every corner.
The film is based on a YouTube series and helmed by 20-year-old first time
director Kane Parsons.
The 100-words: The eerie world of Backrooms is plenty creepy
and foreboding, and even sometimes scary, but this film is more atmosphere than
entertainment. The characters are hard to care about (Reinsve’s psychologist is
played flat and dull) and once we have spent some time in the backrooms, they
become almost predictable in their weirdness. The film feels slow, with little narrative momentum beyond the premise... and I just knew we would never get anything close to satisfactory
answers to what was going on. Parsons has talent and vision, but needs to build
a more compelling story to match his aesthetic sensibility.
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