Backrooms – Review

In a story best to be discovered via watching, Backrooms is an interesting mix of filming techniques which cohesively tells a creepy and unnerving oddball horror show tale. Mostly dealing with a slow paced and unsettling psychological madness, Backrooms has a vibe that many will find chilling, however others have been bored by. Myself, I liked a lot of what was presented here.

Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire furniture store owner Clark (Ejiofor) struggles with a lack of customers, shooting a new commercial, store vandalism, strange electrical issues, rats, bills, stress and finding a new way to reinvigorate sales. He talks to his therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Reinsve) about life issues, as well as being somewhat alone in life at this point. His personal relationships are also suffering, and things aren’t going well with his wife.

As Clark’s life stresses press more tension into needing money and work performance, the film’s plot ratchets everything up about 100 notches into pure insanity as it kicks in, creating some crazy happenings in the Ottoman Empire emporium. What is going on? What is the danger?!

I like the small cast quite a lot, which is anchored by Ejiofor and Reinsve, but boosted by bit roles like Maxwell and Duplass, who is always great. They got to do plenty during the runtime, as a completely normal reality blends with surreal scenes and strange moments.

While I didn’t absolutely cherish the core idea in the film, it’s still a pretty good vibe and atmosphere of oddness, oppression and creep. I liked its visual choices, and the story was decent enough to keep me drawn in until the end. Films like this show that a little budget can go a long way if the idea is decent and the script is thoughtful and well planned out.

The creativity on display definitely boosted this one for me, and will bring me back for future viewings down the line, especially to reconsider some of the visual and layers of psychological madness. The general approach to this film allows the viewers to add their own imaginative creepy interpretations and feelings to the visuals presented, which is great.

“Every Sultan deserves a throne!”

This film has an “Everything Must Go“ edition with 15 or so minutes of additional footage. Additionally, there is a Backrooms TV series by Kane Parsons which ran from 2022-2025 and is a collection of short (5-15 minute) quick found footage episodes. I have not seen it, so I am not sure if it is pure lead in to this film or just using the same ideas.

This whole film seems to have arisen based on a strange message board post (4chan for the informed), which grew into its own dark lore of the ‘backrooms’ and eventually spawned this film.