A reckoning is upon us.
Genre: Horror
Premise: An architect who’s been burdened with running a small town furniture store discovers an endless series of rooms running underneath his store.
About: The backrooms started as a picture of a real room of yellowed walls that looked both depressing and terrifying. Reddit started writing nosleep articles about it and the lore became more and more expansive until people started making videos of this picture on Youtube — turning it into a never-ending maze of this awful piss-yellow sad endless series of walls and rooms. 17 year old Kane Parsons was the Youtube creator who got the most views from his Backrooms videos. His version was the creepiest and most imaginative. Now, here’s the interesting thing. Nobody owned the rights to the Backrooms IP. It was created publicly. But A24 was still terrified of putting millions of dollars into this property only to later find out that someone owned it and wanted compensation. So, if you read between the lines, A24 would not have preferred to hire a 20 year old director. It’s just not done for a major film. Too risky. However, Kane could use all of the lore that he created in his videos, which provided a legal safety net for A24. So, that’s why a 20 year old is directing such a giant film. The writer of the script, Will Soodik, has written for several high-profile TV shows, including Westworld.
Writer: Will Soodik and Kane Parsons
Details: 110 minutes
People have asked what I think of this new wave of young YouTubers taking over the movie industry.
You want to know what I think of it?
I LOVE IT.
I love it love it love it.
You know why? Because this is the first time in I can’t even remember how long that something fresh and exciting is happening in Hollywood. I’m actually going to go into this more in my Friday article, where I discuss how and why this is happening. But I think it’s great. People are talking about movies again and that’s a great thing. Cause they weren’t talking about them for a long time.
Now, when it comes to Backrooms, I’ve been a fan of these videos since they first popped up on Youtube. My first thought when I saw them was, “When is this going to be a movie?” Cause it was so obvious that it could be one. Well, that time has come.
Clark is a newly divorced failed architect who is slumming it up running a large crappy furniture store in this 1990s set story. When he can’t figure out where his way-too-large electric bill is coming from, he looks into the circuit breaker in his basement, which leads him to an invisible doorway that takes him into the backrooms, a never-ending connection of yellow-walled generic rooms.
Clark starts exploring the rooms and is baffled by just how expansive and random they are. He then gets a couple of his younger employees to come with him and document the experience. The trio then sets out to go deeper into the backrooms than Clark has ever gone before, and that’s when things get strange.
Some sort of unseen creature grabs the cameraman. Clark then gets split up from his second employee. And eventually he falls deeper and deeper into the backrooms until he’s lost.
We then cut to Mary, who we met earlier in the film. She’s Clark’s therapist. She goes looking for Clark. Cause that’s what therapists do when their patients don’t show up for a session. She goes to his furniture store, finds the basement, finds the secret entrance to the backrooms, and goes in herself. She eventually finds Clark. But poor Clark has kind of gone insane. And now Mary has to escape him and find her way out of… the backrooms.
There are so many weird things about this movie. Something that nobody is talking about is that this is a movie for 20 year olds yet they cast a 50 year old man and a 40 year old woman in the leads. Maybe they knew the youngsters would show up but still needed the old guard and that’s why they cast these two? Still a strange choice.
Getting to the story here, I thought the first 40 minutes was pretty good. It’s a little clunky at times, which I’ll discuss in a second. But the weirdness of these backrooms and the introduction into that world is exciting. You both want to know and don’t want to know what’s around the next corner.
However, the longer you stay in this world, the clearer it is that the director has only a slightly better idea of what this place is than you do.
This is actually important. Because when you do any sort of world-building in screenwriting, you need to understand your mythology 100%. The reason The Matrix is a classic is because the Wachowskis spent 10 years refining that mythology. Not by choice. But because their project kept getting rejected. But that ended up being a good thing cause it forced them to continue thinking about and building the world they were setting their story in.
Kane Parsons maybe understands 40% of the Backrooms mythology. And, keep in mind, he did not create this world. He built on what others had created. So, it makes sense he’s not sure what it is.
The reason all this matters is because a story like this needs its mythology to be 100% solid for it to fire on all cylinders. Because the whole deal is the backrooms. If there isn’t an understanding of what’s going on there, then the entire experience is going to be running on fumes and guesswork. Which is exactly what happens.
The interesting thing here, though, is that the backrooms are so trippy and so weird that they can kind of withstand some of this weak scaffolding. Mythology schmamolgy as long as there’s some trippy looking robot creature peeking its head out from one of the crevices in the walls.
But that then puts the pressure on the characters and the storytelling itself. And, ultimately, that’s where The Backrooms falls apart.
There’s a scene in the first act where, after a long day, Clark is in his bed, watching TV, about to go to sleep. And then we pull away and we show that Clark is actually still at the store. He’s using one of the for-sale beds to sleep in that night and has pulled up one of the televisions, I guess, to watch before going to bed.
It’s a cute little gag.
But there’s a deep tissue problem with this moment. We’re not exactly sure what it means. Does this mean that Clark lives here at the furniture store? There’s a moment earlier, during his therapy session with Mary, where he mentions that his ex-wife lives in their house now. But the indication is that that happened a while ago. So, surely, he’s rented an apartment since then, right?
Or hasn’t he?
Okay, let’s say he hasn’t. Let’s say he’s living here. Well, he has employees. Do his employees know this? Or does he hide it from them? Does he get up every morning an hour before they show up and hide the evidence that he sleeps there? That information — the information that would actually tell us something about this character — is never shared with us.
Think about what the cost is for not clarifying this. Those are two completely different characters — one who is okay with his employees knowing that he lives here after work and one who hides that from his employees. The first one doesn’t give a fuck. The second one feels ashamed. Two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS. If you want to construct a strong clear character, those details matter A LOT. But we’re never given that information. Or any information like it.
But you wanna know what?
I don’t think Kane Parsons knows the answer to that question. I don’t think he cares. He liked the bed gag. That’s all he cares about.
Now, you may say, “Carson, you’re looking into this way too deeply. People aren’t going to this movie for character development. They’re going to be creeped out by the backrooms.”
I agree with that. That’s what today’s “what l learned” section is about. The problem is, the third act is about how the backrooms are part of Clark’s psyche! Mary is walking into Clark’s head. We are literally in the character’s head. Which means the entire script is dependent on the character development being A+. And the director hasn’t even established who this character is.
So, you’re watching this final act and you’re going… what’s going on here? Absolutely nothing about Clark’s descent into madness is earned cause we barely know anything about him.
And, again, the movie sort of covers it up with the effective creepiness of the tall pirate monster chasing Mary. That’s the power of the Backrooms. Is that every time a glaring screenwriting issue pops up, the backrooms says ‘look over here!’ and you stop focusing on it.
With that said, I still think they left a ton on the table with the backrooms. There are much better backrooms moments online (on YouTube) than what they gave us. That was what I was looking forward to the most — seeing stuff that I hadn’t seen on Youtube. This is the big screen baby. Give us something bigger.
But a lot of this was rehashed stuff you could already see online. There wasn’t a single new backrooms moment where I said, “Oh wow. That’s cool.” Nor did it seem like they were looking to create that moment.
So, all in all, this movie wasn’t for me.
But what I say next might surprise you. I don’t think anything I just said matters. Yeah, the character development here wasn’t even half-baked. It was quarter-baked. But maybe that’s what makes the movie feel fresh. I remember watching Phantasm as a kid and a lot of it didn’t make sense. But it stayed with me my whole life. Cause it was weird and unpredictable and unsettling. And I think the teens and 20-somethings who see this film will leave having had a similar experience.
And I think that may be part of this larger movement going on with these Youtube filmmakers that is getting people back to the theater. The very fact that they AREN’T doing it the Hollywood way, or the Scriptshadow way, is what’s helping them stand out. I’m going to talk about that a lot more on Friday.
For Wednesday, I’m going to take a break from horror and review a script from that new female writer who had 40 companies chasing down her rom-com script last week. I’m not reviewing her rom-com. But I’m reviewing the script she wrote before that. That should be fun.
Seeya then!
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Like I always say — whatever it is that people are coming to your movie for, make sure that that thing works. If it’s comedy, the majority of your focus should be on making sure the script is funny. If it’s a thriller, the majority of your focus should be on making your script fast and exciting. If it’s a horror movie, your focus needs to be on scares and creepiness. If you succeed in providing the key thing that the audience came to experience, the script can withstand a surprising amount of weaknesses. And I think that’s why Backrooms is doing so well. Its character development sucks. But it’s consistently creepy throughout. And since that’s what people are coming there for, they’re mostly leaving satisfied.
