back room
Director: Ken Parsons
Mould: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsway, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell and Krista Kosonen
Rating: ★★★⯪ (3.5 stars)
A period of change is going on in cinema. Backroom started as Creepypasta. It is now a summer blockbuster, grossing over $150 million worldwide. This sensation from 20-year-old first-time filmmaker Ken Parsons is finally coming to India too. And one glimpse of its scenery and scale tells you why it has generated so much buzz. Backroom gets a lot right – from the awesome setting to the uncomfortable way it was shot, and of course, the pitch perfect performance. It’s an ambitious film told in a fresh way. But it’s also indulgent and chaotic, and not always in a good way. As Ken Parsons leads the audience into this endless maze of horrors, he himself struggles to find the right way out.
what is the backroom about
Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a talented architect struggling to make a living by selling furniture, discovers a secret passageway to a hidden world in his office. The world violates all the laws of physics. Concerned, Clark called two of his employees, armed with handycams, to investigate the mysterious rooms. But there, they realize that they are not alone. Maybe something is hunting them. Concurrently, Clark’s therapist, Marie (Renate Reinsway), is struggling with her own demons and becoming skeptical of Clark’s accounts of mysterious places. When Clark goes missing, Mary goes to find him, but gets trapped in the maze herself. Now, she’s in a race against time to save herself from her mysterious pursuer while also trying to figure out where he is.
What sets Backroom apart
This shows that this film is made by a 20-year-old who has no burden of mainstream filmmaking. Ken Parsons has created a world that feels fresh. It takes inspiration from various found footage films and uncanny valley stories seen over the past two decades, but the story is original, the presentation fresh. The way Ken Parsons has designed this world is also commendable. The almost other-worldly cinematography (by Jeremy Cox) and score (by Parsons himself) add a touch of unease for the audience. Without any major shocks, the film manages to scare you, or at least scare you, on several occasions.
The performances are perfect for the genre, with Renate Reinsway coming across as a woman caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Spanning a generation, the actor again brings fear to the screen in a way that very few others can. Chiwetel Ejiofor carries the film in the first half, establishing the premise almost perfectly through the eyes of his confused character.
undercurrents of human behavior
Passion, last month’s second low-budget horror sensation, was a critique of men’s refusal to recognize women’s autonomy. Similarly, The Backroom is about the reluctance of human beings to recognize their own failings, let alone act on them. But unlike Currie Barker, who beautifully brought out the behavioral undercurrents in Obsession, Ken Parsons struggles to balance them with the visual imagination he wants to create for the backroom. The film oscillates between a literal claustrophobic nightmare and wanting to be a metaphor. The slow pace is good to keep the audience engaged, but at times the pace of the film slows down so much that the tension starts to wane.
An important question arises in the background. Does a film always have to entertain or is it enough to keep the audience engaged? There’s no doubt that this movie will spark conversation, fan theories, and fanfiction like any open secret. But it does so by removing entertainment in favor of awe, wonder and fear.