Backrooms – aukermania

6/7 🪩🪩🪩🪩🪩🪩

This movie is weird. Good weird.

I vaguely remember the image that started it all in 2019 when a photo from 2002 went viral, but I don’t remember watching the YouTube videos from director Kane Parsons that eventually helped turn this eerie internet nightmare into a blockbuster film. Either way, I think this film brought to life a phenomenon that made the internet spiral with theories in the most wonderful way.

What is it about found footage that automatically makes something ten times creepier? Whatever it is, those moments worked. I caught myself saying, “No, don’t go there,” so many times. The film forces you to experience fear in first person, pulling you into these spaces in such a wonderfully weird way that I really dug those parts. It felt very real (and surreal).

Like the sentiment I’ve seen in some other reviews, the more traditional cinematic lens does create a few awkward tonal shifts. At times, it was hard to follow where the film was going next, but I also think that was intentional thinking back on some scenes. I’ll have to watch it again to tell if it was on purpose. This is not a film that wants you to feel settled. It wants you disoriented, confused, curious, and deeply uncomfortable.

And the production design? WOW.

This film is a masterclass in creating a world that feels both massive and claustrophobic. The wallpaper, the corridors, the endless rooms, the strange little details placed in the background. Everything feels carefully chosen, even when the space itself feels random and impossible. The visuals are fantastically framed, and the wallpaper somehow allows key elements to pop out in a way I don’t think I’ve seen in another film. Possibly The Shining. This film felt like Inception mixed with The Shining on acid. A little slow at times, but that just made the scary scenes scarier. I did like the different view points. Felt raw and similar to how memory works. It plays with perspective so well that there were moments where I felt like I was inside the movie, trying to figure out which doorway was safe, which corner was hiding something, and which hallway was just waiting to swallow me whole.

The one thing this film does brilliantly, and I think this hit me especially because I used to make my own 3D games as a kid, is how it builds out space. How many different corridors and iterations of each room did they develop? How much continuity did they have to track? Or was part of the process simply letting it be whimsical, strange, and fun? So much of this movie can be interpreted, but how much of that is a reflection of our own minds, and how much is the painstaking craftsmanship of an impressive labyrinth that always changes? I loved it.

My real question, though: how much wallpaper did they end up using? Where is it now? Hopefully in a warehouse while they’re writing the second film.

The sound and score are also superb. The music is eerie and works really well, but the sound design is what really pulled me in. It focuses on the scary elements of a room… a hum, a shuffle, a distant noise, something lurking in the dark. That kind of fear is so effective because it makes you suspicious of everything.

The acting is, for the most part, stellar. The subtleties of each character really play out well, and the actors do a great job delivering lines in scenes that must have felt incredibly eerie to perform. I kept wondering what it must have been like to act in those rooms, surrounded by that strange wallpaper, strange lighting, and strange emptiness.

Where I think the film lost me was the ending. I needed either a little less or a little more, but I have so many unanswered questions. Yes, there is a whole bunch of lore and backstories I can look up, but not going to do that right now. (SPOILER ALERT) Still, I think we could have been given a little hope she’d be released or that it was a little more optimistic outlook. Oh well. We’ll see (or not, hopefully yes). (END SPOILER ALERT)

Backrooms is not a clean, easy, traditional horror film. It is awkward, unsettling, experimental, creepy, and completely committed to its own strange world. The found-footage sequences are fantastic, the production design is unforgettable, and the whole thing feels like walking through someone else’s nightmare.

Weird? Absolutely. But good weird.

Emotion: 6/7
Editing & Story: 6/7
Visuals: 7/7