On May 12th seven years ago, an anonymous account on the internet site 4Chan responded to a photo of a large, sterile, retail space with fluorescent lights and yellow walls. The post described the experience of ‘noclipping’ out of reality and ending up in a mysterious place known only as the Backrooms, a six-hundred million mile maze consisting only of rooms like the one pictured. The post ended with the following:
‘God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.’
This short post has in the years following inspired a folkloric explosion of content online. From memes to merchandise to miniseries, the concept of ‘The Backrooms’ gradually became a mainstay of internet culture, developing far beyond what was described in the original post.
One of the main developments in this burgeoning internet subculture was a series of YouTube short films uploaded by Kane Parsons, also known as Kane Pixels online. These videos took the internet by storm, with the first episode alone receiving 78 million views. Due to this success, a film adaptation was quickly announced, with Parsons at the helm.
Now, on the day following that film’s opening weekend, Kane Parsons may become the youngest person of all time to have a number one film, and it can be wholeheartedly said: he deserves it.
The film is a triumph. It is a Lovecraftian horror for the 21st century. A completely, innovative and original cinematic experience that truly feels like a leap forward for the genre as a whole.
It is, at times, a film that borders on being indescribable. There are moments that awake truly primordial instincts of fear within the audience. The winding corridors, the strange misshapen rooms and the strewn, distorted objects, are truly unsettling to explore, and yet there is an odd beauty to the film’s overall setting.
The Backrooms themselves are a liminal space, where distorted versions of the past roam freely, where memories of memories meet and interact with one another as though themselves alive. Characters in the film whose lives have gone wrong are enticed by the environment, tempted by the promise of wallowing in echoes of the past, and the decision over whether to cede to this temptation marks the core conflict of the film.
The score (partially written by Parsons himself) is haunting. It is ambient, vaguely nostalgic, and deeply eerie in tone. The soundtrack will doubtlessly be notable to many, namely because many of the songs included are lifted directly from iconic elements of internet culture, each with a direct link to the film’s themes.
One such example of this is Ulterior Motives, a song that went viral on the internet in the earlier parts of this decade as an echoey, muddled snippet of unknown origin. The source of the snippet was unidentified for many years, and considered ‘Lost Media’, until it was one day discovered to be from the soundtrack of a 1986 pornographic film entitled Angels of Passion. A once-forgotten song that was rediscovered in a distorted form is, for obvious reasons, a very clever inclusion in
the film. The song is an artefact of nostalgia and memory, recognisable yet altered irreparably, in a similar vein to many objects we see in the film.
Also notable is the inclusion of All That Follows is True, a song lifted from the album series Everywhere at the End of Time, an electronic music project by artist James Kirby (also known as The Caretaker), notable for utilizing increasingly degraded samples of ballroom music. The album series is a conceptual work intended to simulate the experience of one’s memories becoming increasingly degraded and distorted over time. It ultimately went viral on the internet due to its disturbing sound and content, propelling its creator to significant fame. The song’s inclusion in a flashback sequence of the film serves as a reminder of the film’s central message: that our memories are mere recreations of given events, fallible recreations that degrade over time.
Ultimately, it is clear that what sets this film apart is its visual and audial language. While its characters are interesting and likeable, by-and-large, the film’s true protagonist is the Backrooms itself. It is the brief moments where the film loses sight of this that it becomes less focused. The ‘dinner’ scene is a notable instance where the film essentially halts the Backrooms plotline to focus on the characters themselves, and I concur with the many people online who have rightfully identified this portion of the film as boring and tedious in comparison to the rest.
To summarize, the film is a marvelous artistic achievement. It is strongest aesthetic work we have seen from the horror genre since Stanley Kubrick’s take on The Shining, and I eagerly await any future instalments in the franchise.
5/5 Stars.
