Perhaps the first film ever to be adapted from a 4chan post, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms is without question one of the best horror films this decade.
For those unfamiliar with the Backrooms concept, the idea originated with a post on the popular imageboard website 4chan that highlighted the creepy atmosphere of an empty and abandoned retail showroom, kicking off a trend of similar posts about other eerie liminal spaces. In 2022, 16-year-old Kane Parsons started the webseries Backrooms, a cinematic adaptation of the 4chan posts that combined liminal and analog horror through the use of a found footage aesthetic. The series was a viral success, allowing the now 20-year-old Parsons to direct the A24-produced feature now playing in cinemas worldwide.
Starring Academy Award nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, Backrooms follows a furniture store owner (Ejiofor) in 1990 who discovers a gateway to the mysterious Backrooms in the basement of his store, becoming obsessed with exploring the eerie and dangerous environment and causing his therapist (Reinsve) to grow concerned for his wellbeing. Both Reinsve and Ejiofor are excellent in their roles and brilliantly communicate the alienation of the liminal space. Such strong performances are a great testament to Parsons’ directing capabilities, which are nothing short of extraordinary. His instincts are intelligent and precise, and he is incredibly measured and thoughtful in his construction of the film, a feat that is incredibly impressive given his age and (relative) inexperience.
Visually, the film is stunning, with Parsons incorporating both conventional cinematography and his webseries’ found footage aesthetic to create a visual language that is aesthetically and formally memorable in a way that few other modern horror films have managed. The production design is magnificent, with the film making use of a great number of practical sets for the Backrooms, a choice that adds to the locations eerie liminality in a way that digital manipulation can’t. The film’s special effects, both the practical prosthetics and animatronics used for the monsters of the Backrooms and the VFX work led by Parsons himself, are incredibly striking and capture the uncanny similarities between the Backrooms and the real world excellently, adding greatly to the audience’s discomfort.
What makes the film so engaging is that, unlike so many horror films that rely on contrived jumpscares to get a reaction out of their audience, Parsons forces his viewer to soak themselves in the terror of a liminal existence and makes them reflect on how that alienation and danger maps back onto their lives within the real world. Overall, Backrooms is one of the best horror films in years, and there is no doubt in my mind that you will regret not seeing it in theatres.
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