Backrooms is a frustrating movie because for the first half, it’s genuinely a great one. After this, the movie shifts tones entirely and feels like it was directed by a totally different person.
On the surface, Backrooms does something that hardly any other horror movie has done before – brought the concept and unease of a liminal space to the big screen. The rooms, corridors, buildings and everything in between are done extremely well and that deserves praise. I was made to feel uneasy and uncomfortable, especially during the handheld camera sections. The perspective changes to one of immersion, being carried by the atmosphere of knowing something can be around one of the many corners at any time.
The movie starts with an initial camera footage scene inside the well-known yellow corridors, building up the premise of knowing an entity is stalking around. Later on, as Clark and his team are exploring further into the Backrooms, we are shown more of the weird and unsettling rooms and levels that are featured, varying from a pool to a Christmas tree room. These all look and feel fantastic and really offer an unsettling and uncanny feeling. Backrooms relies heavily on its atmosphere and tension, which it nails perfectly. At least in the first half of the movie.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The exact point where the movie falls off a cliff is the moment the screen goes black after the second camera footage, supposedly being where Clark “dies” to the entity. In my honest opinion, this feels like the perfect ending to a short movie and should have been done as such. However, what follows is a confusing mess of a story, revolving around Clark’s insanity inside the Backrooms. He’s set up a small house, keeps fake copies of humans and kidnaps his therapist. Clark was never made out to be the type of person who would even come close to being that psychotic.
His death felt rushed, the story/plot kept freefalling and whilst the entity looked cool and had an interesting lore behind said look, the chase scenes were lame. Mary was also not given anywhere near enough story or screen time for us to even really care that she’s being chased by pirate Clark. The tension and atmosphere that the movie built up from the entire first half was destroyed in the second, offering nothing more than a basic “horror” movie that did not stand out from anything else we’ve seen previously.
Backrooms had all the workings and ability to be great, but it’s squandered entirely with its incredibly weak second half. With the first act being perfect in tension and atmosphere, I just wish they had continued to see this side of the movie through until the end credits.
