Backrooms, Horror Film Review by Case Wright


I actually thought that I reviewed “Backrooms” already, but I had not. However, since it is October, it’s a perfect time to review this …. story. The fanbase is Star Wars-level obsessive and just because I don’t particularly care for something, it doesn’t mean it’s terrible- it usually does, but maybe this time is different. I can’t be correct – all the time…. or can I?

This film started as a 4chan post that went viral and the writer/director Kane Parsons built his life around this 4chan post. Then, he went all found footage on its ass. From the age of sixteen to twenty, his entire life was devoted to this magical world that looks a lot like a cubicle farm without the cubicles. The backrooms is a place where you expect to see sad data entry professionals working in sweatshop conditions. Maybe the backrooms is really just a front for an H1-B scam? Whenever a person enters the backrooms, all the workers are gone; so, maybe they used the backrooms as a means to move around their illegal data entry group and things got out of hand, creating a H1-B multiverse?

The film’s quantum mechanics are very intricate, but the movie itself has a very thin plot like saran wrap thin. Backrooms is 95% lore and the plot exists just to have more scenes wandering around the backrooms. Clark is the vehicle we use to get into the backrooms; he is the protagonist – sort of. He is an abusive alcoholic and failed architect who likely killed his wife. He also runs a furniture store and has employees who hate him, but that’s pretty normal for Clark because Clark is an asshat. In fact, his asshattery is so well-developed that even his therapist thinks he’s a boring jerk.

During one of his self-loathing sessions, Clark goes to his store’s basement and tries to do some electricity maintenance and he falls through a portal in his wall to …. wait for it…the backrooms! They basically look like the same room that he was in, but crappier and there are infinite backroom dimensions and quasi-fake people who you can eat- if you want. Apparently, it is okay to go Dahmer on these freaky people because they are “still lifes” – copies of copies of the earth prime people- I think.

He tells his therapist about the backrooms and she checks them out and nearly dies. I would have avoided this adventure and I would’ve been just fine. Clark, unlike me, becomes obsessed with the backrooms, gets his employees to explore them with him, and all the employees die because of a monster or because Clark eats them. Yes, Clark is a quasi-cannibal or a full-on cannibal or he is long pig curious. Don’t worry, Clark is stopped because he gets eaten by a paper mache version of himself. I always knew that arts and crafts were the devil’s workshop.

You could say that the backrooms are a Clark eat Clark world….

If you want to understand the backrooms, be prepared to have A LOT of homework like D&D dungeon master levels of homework!

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