A Review of "Backrooms" -- Curiouser and Curiouser (SPOILERS)

SPOILERS AHEAD

My beloved V.,

So, Backrooms. I… enjoyed it? I did but I’m not exactly sure why.

Clark is a furniture store manager with a degree in architecture, whose wife kicked him out of the house before the story starts. In the lower floor of his store, he discovers a doorway to another place, a place with faded yellow walls and hallways leading to rooms leading to hallways and more rooms. At one point, his assistant manager and her boyfriend join him on this excursion.

But how much of Clark’s personal life really matters? It doesn’t really feel like it does anyway. Because, honestly, I don’t really care about him. I want to think I know what he wants — for the store to be successful, for his wife to take him back — but he seems to act more from a curious nature than from a desire to have or do something.

The first half of the movie goes by really freaking slowly. It crawls. But everything here is intentional, right? I actually felt sleepy at a couple of points; those same points were the times I would check in with my husband to make sure he wasn’t asleep either.

I’m not exactly sure what purpose this slowness served — other than, perhaps, to set a mood. Is this where we are supposed to start caring about the character?

There’s a wild montage about Clark dressing as a pirate for a television commercial, but story-wise, Clark could have used anything for that commercial as long as it could be manipulated into a large hulking thing hidden deep in the Backrooms.

I don’t really empathize with Clark though. I don’t really care what happens to him, other than he’s the one on the screen we are following through the story. But I’m not exactly sure we are supposed to, either.

What this really feels like to me is a bit of a long introduction to the setting of the story, and the star of the story, which, of course, is The Backrooms.

There’s a man later in the movie who says that he works at a company who used to make MRIs and now they track whatever this phenomenon is called. When the therapist reaches this guy, this is where I wanted the story to start.

Whatever the name of the company, because I haven’t gone to look, we need to see them similar to how we see Weyland-Yutani in the Alien franchise.

There feels like there could be so much to this world, but it’s all hidden in the guise of having a main character to find and experience the Backrooms for the viewers to see through.

The thing is this could just be one of those movies that, for me, might not strike the chord I expect because I’m Gen X. Yes, while the whole generation thing is bullshit, the memes still resonate. The director of Backrooms, on the other hand, is 20 years old (or was 20 years old when he directed the movie) and so, I wanted to see what the “youth” are doing, and yeah, I’m getting old.

I mean, I’m beginning to reference pop culture characters I expect “everyone” to know, and getting blank stares.

And I don’t know what to do with that.

I’m looking forward to the next project from this director. He took some interesting chances that paid off — I’ll be interested in seeing what he does next.