Backrooms Has Such An Effectively Tense Setting

Backrooms as a horror movie asks an important question: “How scary, really, can you make an environment?” The answer—as it turns out—is very scary. As long as you make sure the location is both uncanny enough and has a strong enough sense of unseen threats, even a series of mostly yellow walls and yellow floors and awful fluorescent lights can become riveting. A slow pan to a dark hallway where you can hear something trudging around is infinitely scarier than any slasher villain I’ve ever seen.

And thank god Backrooms nails that aspect, nails its environment, because otherwise this movie is very basic, very simple. It reminds me of a short horror story. There’s minimal characterization (and minimal cast, overall) and a standard progression of increasing terror with basically no true surprises. It’s almost difficult to latch onto the actual victims because they are more symbols and archetypes than true-blue representations of people. Four named people go into the Backrooms, but only two have anything approaching an arc. One is a man whose life fell apart in very usual ways (a breakup and financial struggles), and the other is his therapist with a tragic backstory that makes her uncomfortable being around people.  

These Characters Are Typical Horror Protagonists

It’s in the symbolism and parallels that this movie shines, and it does so in a very approachable way. You don’t actually need to analysis it’s themes to get a lot of its effect. The visuals and dialogue are just so perfectly constructed to evoke the feelings and general talking points, regardless. I love movies that are open to multiple interpretations (that’s the wonderfulness of art overall), but—for the sake of a coherent article—I think Backrooms is about being stuck in the past and unwilling to move on from it. The plot is very cosmic and doesn’t bother to explain much, but we can understand that the Backrooms (the location, not the title) is a place of memories, but also self-perception. It’s not just being stuck in our pasts—like how our main character isn’t with his wife anymore—but about being stuck in who we were in the past. The man our main character acts out in the very first scene is still in existence. Our anger and guilt and regrets don’t fade with time; they go somewhere else. Somewhere with yellow walls.

The Backrooms Is Such A Versatile Horror Setting

But the real trick of the movie is actually in the scenes that don’t take place in the titular location. Backrooms is a movie consisting of mirrored sets, and the outside world gets its own disquieting tone. Perhaps I am wrong, but I am convinced that the clouds and sky in many, many shots were CGI as much as anything else. They just look a little too bright and a little too still. While the Backrooms (again, I mean the location) is an unfurling labyrinth that will quickly turn either into an obsession or a hostile environment, the real world is shown as a lonely, underpopulated, and cold place that sprawls and sprawls. There are never enough people in any scene, and they always seem a little distracted or checked out. The only splash of activity that feels cohesive and energetic is when characters are watching media made to entertain. Putting back on my thematic analysis hat, I’d say Backrooms is managing to slip some commentary about nostalgia and how the past may be ugly, but at least it’s interesting. The horror of mundanity isn’t exactly something easily shown without disappointing an audience, but Backrooms does that, too.

Taking all of this into consideration, I’m actually questioning if Backrooms doesn’t just match a very narrow and specific form of a “perfect movie.” From first to last shot, Backrooms is accomplishing every goal I can perceive it attempting. Unless I’m totally off my mark here, it’s a flawless communication of very specific feelings and very specific anxieties. The special effects look incredible, and the camera work often evokes dread all by itself. If Backrooms doesn’t resonate with you, it’s not going to resonate with you, but that’s the risk of making art this specific, this focused, and I, personally, loved watching it and I wish I could see it again for the first time.