Film Review - The Backrooms

We break down A24's monster breakout hit and analyze what this low budget high ROI Youtube-based film means for the industry as a whole.

Transcript

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Hi, and welcome to the Film Element Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Galant, and today I will be doing a film review of the new Kane Parsons movie, Backrooms. Uh, Backrooms is a horror film about a man that works at a furniture store who discovers a portal doorway into what I can imagine is another dimension of hell that is shaped as the backrooms of maybe an office building or an older furniture store with really psychedelic imagery. Um things soon spiral out of control as this man tries to understand why he has been placed in this place and what it all means. I will talk about this film in the beginning without spoilers since the film since the the movie just came out. And then I will say at a point that I am going into spoilers so that you know. Um I wanted to talk about backrooms. As I mentioned, if you listen to my film review on the horror film Obsession, which only just came out three weeks ago or two weeks ago, um, I wanted to talk about these mainstream films, which is not something I'm normally going to do, but I wanted to talk about it because of the impact that films, these two films specifically, are gonna have on the industry. The Backrooms is now on is now on the way, on the path to making maybe a hundred million dollars this weekend. Now that is Nolan territory. That is Spider-Man 1 or 2. This is not the typical path for a $10 million, you know, horror film by A-24. Now, in my review of Obsession, I spoke about how A24 was supposed to be this fringe studio that made stuff that just made original content, uh, original films, and would take their little slice of the box office pie. Basically, they were just trying to keep the art form of cinema alive and well. A lot of original uh films, not many sequels, not really, not many franchises, a lot of low budget but very original uh screenwriting and filmmaking, filmmaking techniques, all that stuff. I think now they are a force to be reckoned with. And I think every studio that has all of these franchises, all of these supposed moneymakers, like Warner Brothers, Disney, um, I mean Paramount, they're waking up to the fact that they have bet on the wrong horses when they should have been sitting around figuring out how to bring up and utilize uh original ideas and stuff that is going out on YouTube and to general audiences where their people aren't our where they aren't um watching stuff, they missed the boat. And they thought they could shovel out, you know, another extremely mediocre Star Wars movie and they could laugh all the way to the bank. And as we have seen, that franchise is not bulletproof. Backrooms will dethrone its second weekend, and shockingly, it looks like Obsession in its third week will as well. And considering Obsession came out three weeks ago and Mandalorian just came out two week uh a week ago, that is unprecedented. And it is, you know, this is a this is a siren call. This is this is a this is a shake of the likes of which I don't know if we've ever we've ever seen. Um many months ago I talked about how the acquisition of Undertone, which was a five hundred thousand dollar Canadian film uh that has people I know uh that were involved with it. Um an acquisition on that level was unheard of in Canadian film. Hi, sorry about that. I'm back. Uh my kid decided to wake up in the middle of my podcast, so I had to pause and go uh deal with her. Hopefully she is asleep now. If you listen carefully, you might be able to hear the um lullaby of their music machine up in their room coming through the monitor. But anyway, uh I totally forget where I was. And by the way, I also realized uh I jumped right from my obsession review into doing this one. I banked these two back to back, and I realized I forgot to change the background of my computers, which show try to show a still from the movie I'm reviewing, and I'm reviewing the movie Backrooms. But if you were looking at my computer screens, you would think I was reviewing the movie Obsession. I forgot to change it when I went from one review to the next. So I'm too deep in now. It just is what it is. If anyone from Backrooms is watching this review, not just listening, but watching, I apologize. It is what it is. Anyway, let's move on. So I forget where I was in my review of Backrooms before this uh slight interruption. Um, but I'm just gonna talk about what I liked about the film. What I liked about this film is it did something very specific that I don't think I've ever seen. Now, the 90s have come up stylistically in a lot of movies in the re recently. I think the last one I can really point a finger at is um oh the Austin Butler one that came out last year. Oh, I forget the name of it. It was it was fun, it was directed by Darren Aronofsky, but uh maybe something I'll revisit again. I enjoyed it when I saw in theaters, but it took place in the nineties and it didn't feel like the nineties, it sort of felt like it was cosplaying at the nine as the nineties. Um but what I liked about Backrooms is that it took place in 1990 and it felt like 1990. It was a very specific and it it all bleeds into what this film is trying to do. And it has this very specific aesthetic that to me was very familiar, reminded me of the furniture I, you know, lived with growing up, especially in the 90s, and at my house, at my friend's house, uh and because a lot of this takes place at a furniture store, so the couches just felt very familiar to me, even in the therapist room. Um there's just something about it that felt familiar, all the all the wood furniture that kind of work, kind of clashed. You know, a lot of shows that do uh, you know, that are period pieces and take place in the 90s. I'm always amazed at those other shows and TV, those TV shows and movies, at how often there's no carpeting. Like everywhere is tile. And uh, trust me, I know tile is much more aesthetically pleasing, hard wood is much more aesthetically pleasing. But I remember there being growing up, carpet was everywhere in everything. And that's one thing that this movie got right about the 90s, and again, this is why I have difficulty believing. I know there's a whole controversy about whether or not this kid actually directed the film, or if he just sort of, you know, they borrowed his IP and made him the face of the film, but really it was James Wan and all the and Sean Litt Levy and all these other directors who were producing it, and they kind of had their hand in it, which I completely believe that they did. Um, I just find it impossible that a $10 million film would be uh that a 20-year-old director would get final cut or he wouldn't be carefully overlooked, or every decision that he wanted to do had to specifically go through them. A24 obviously prides itself on you know being very directly fr director-friendly, but I've I've seen a lot of stuff, especially as an editor, um, where very rarely does a director just get to be who they want to be. And I think a film comes together on a lot of different fronts. Directing, obviously, the d a lot of things go through the director, yes, but you know, this aesthetic that I mean the production design I think could be nominated for an Oscar. And I don't believe that a 20-year-old kid has could do these such specific things. Um, because when you're working on a $10 million film and everyone is probably unionized, everyone is a master of their craft. So a director is just saying yes to yes or no, and it's not they're not coming to them telling them how to do their job. They're they're like, listen, I've I'm unionized. This is a $10 million movie, I know what I'm doing. Um, you know, the dialogue is even really uh well done and deep. And you know, there's a few moments that I could feel, I'm like, okay, this that was a 20-year-old director's decision. Maybe him sipping bourbon while he's laying in bed. That that felt a little uh, you know, that felt a little odd for a grown man to be doing, even if he's an alcoholic. Um spoiler. But I think this film is so well crafted in so many ways, especially with the tension and the uh just the feeling it creates. It I told someone today it reminded me of a real nightmare, and not the way, you know, a film like The Cell recreates a nightmare, which you know had a really great aesthetic that I loved as well. But the uncomfortable feeling of yes, a backroom, and we all know backrooms, we've all been in a really empty mall or a really you know or a conference center that didn't have a lot of windows, you know. As a you know, I've shot a lot of corporate events and I've edited corporate events, and I've been in a lot of conference rooms and ballrooms and these giant empty rooms with like one table or a couple of chairs and there's no windows, and it's just you know, I never thought of it as unnerving until I saw this. Um, but and I it's funny. I think this is what good horror and filmmaking in general does. Good filmmaking is it reminds you of stuff that you didn't even think about or couldn't recall. Like, for instance, 17 or 18 years ago, I went to China. I I took a trip to China uh with my dad, and we were in Beijing, and I stayed at this hotel that wasn't quite in Beijing, it was sort of like 20 minutes outside of the city, uh, because we were doing a conference. I was helping my dad with a conference that he was doing there, and it was this big, weird, empty hotel, and I just remember walking down hallways that were like half-lit and empty, and at one point I turned to my dad, I'm like, are we literally the only guests at this hotel? And I'm like, this isn't a small motel I'm talking about. I'm like, this was like ten stories high, it was a big hotel. And you know, that's something that a lot of people don't know about communism, is that communism keeps a lot of dead things going for a while, and it's a very uncomfortable feeling um because the hotel had employees, people were working there, but it didn't really have the guests to justify its existence. Um so anyway, I just always remembered that feeling, and this film recreated that feeling, and it recreates nightmares. Um, I'm gonna slightly go into spoilers here. I think one of my favorite scares of the film is obviously when he he she is being attacked by this pot crazy pirate-looking uh monster that is a manifestation of the lead character's um you know failings in life. Again, I love this movie, but on the script level, I'm not really sure what I was supposed to get out of it. But anyway, I'll get into that in a second. But then this monster is chasing this guy's therapist who sort of becomes the main character of the film, and she enters this giant uh abyss um with a very thin uh ledge that she has to walk across, and there are stairs sort of in the middle of the abyss that go into the ceiling, and then there's a doorway. Again, it's like I love it's like those old paintings of the you know stairway that goes on and on. You know, it's very trippy and psychedelic, which is the thing I love about this film the most. Um, and just the tension of her trying to get away from the monster, but also having to walk along this stairway with no railing, obviously, or no guardrail into that leads to a doorway that will help her escape. And uh I love the tension of that moment and just the thinking behind that moment. It like I said, it felt like a real nightmare. It felt like you would have a nightmare about that that you wouldn't be able to even uh contextualize or explain to other people. You're just like, I just went through this thing and I can't explain what it felt like, but it felt awful. Um, so there's a lot of really great terror, a lot of really great tension. I just felt uncomfortable in a really fun way, um, especially the first introduction to the backrooms when our lead character Chuetle, played by Chuetle, is walking through and just trying to understand what he's even looking at and what he's seeing. Um and again, the visual aspect of it is so I just I like it's the stuff dreams are made of the the color palette and the brightness, but the use of shadow and lighting, um and especially perspective and horizons. I just I could not get enough of it. Um you know obsession is a film I think is you know the best horror film ever, but I was not in love with the visual aesthetic, despite what they kind of did with some shadows. I just thought the color correction was a little drab and dull. Um I felt backrooms is the opposite. I don't uh overall I'm getting really tired of watching, you know, stuff with what they call Netflix lighting, where everything just feels dim or underlit. Uh, you know, backrooms really push the color and the vibrancy of their imagery. And I think it even though the horror films don't usually do that outside of something like Midsummer, um, but I'm glad that they did because it it like I just I could not get enough of the visual aesthetic of this film, and I'm sure that's something a lot of people are be talking will be talking about. To get into spoilers, what I felt what fell short for me about this film, it's two things. Obviously, this is based off of a YouTube series started by Kane Parsons, I guess, when he was 16, which is wild. And I know some of it was sort of I don't know if it's necessarily made with AI, but very CGI enhanced or created in general. And I believe even some of the sequences we saw in the film were done in uh uh a program called Blender, which is not something I'm familiar with, but um so it's based off of that lore and that series. Not something I'm familiar with at all. Uh, and I've certainly never seen anything from the series, so I went in pretty cold into the film, and I think it still works if you go in cold, but from what I understand, it does help to see those uh see that series to understand what is the backrooms because overall I don't know what the backrooms really are. Um Mark DuPlas plays this guy named Phil, who seems to be some sort of scientist or researcher, um, who is also studying the backrooms, and it feels a little very little stranger thingsy, like you know, like the backrooms are the upside down. Um, but to me the backrooms are actually kind of more a lot more interesting than the upside down, especially ended up being. Um so I think that I guess he's playing that archetype. The problem I sort of had is that I don't know if I got enough out of whatever he was explaining. And then Chiwetle has this really long scene in this sort of weird uh trippy psychedelic kitchen uh with his therapist who's now been kidnapped inside the back rooms. And he sort of explains what's going on, but I didn't feel that the dialogue gave me enough to fully understand why this is happening and what is going on. Um, and then I thought Marc Duplas, his character, was going to show up and sort of, you know, uh fill in even more gaps, and I ended up actually having more questions, especially with some of the final images of the film, um, which, you know, those kind of disturbed me as well. And but it and then it ended. Now, to the film's credit, when it ended in my theater, literally someone stood up and started applauding like they had just seen the Rolling Stones. Like, and I uh some other there was a couple of uh groups, like my theater wasn't full at all, but I saw it like 1 30 on a Friday. Um so I wasn't expecting it to be full, but there was a couple of groups of like young kids and friends, maybe they'd skipped off high school or class or whatever to go check it out. And I remember there was one young girl who just yelled out, What? But I think in a cool way, like she was pretty excited by what she saw. And that's the great thing about being that age, is that must be fun to just show up to your friends and tell them be like, yo, I saw backrooms. It's like you're not even gonna understand what just happened, it's crazy. Um and that's the great thing about a movie like that. Again, and I've seen this criticism about the movie that it is hard to understand why this is happening and what's going on. Um, and I think that might be to the film's detriment or it might not be. I I said this in my review of Undertone. Undertone sort of leaves you a spoiler for Undertone if you haven't seen it yet, but Undertone at the end leaves you going, wait, what? What? Like why? Like what why is this happening? Who what did that mean? Where did it where is this coming from? How did this start? And horror sort of gets its jollies off of not explaining that stuff when most film genres would. You know, something like sci-fi is notorious for really filling in the gaps. Horror, most good horror films and scripts know that it's almost scarier when we don't explain what happens. Um does that work for backrooms? To each their own, I guess. It didn't. I really enjoyed the ride of backrooms and just the aesthetic and the feeling it creates. Um I loved the performances of the actors involved. I loved the tension and the scares and the you know the chase sequences, and I loved the monster. I think a lot of people are saying he looked a little too goofy to take seriously. I loved it personally. Um and uh and I did love the ending because the ending was extremely unsettling. I just don't know what it meant, and I think they're trying to insinuate that things are looped around. And I am excited to watch like a YouTube video that maybe got more out of it. And can explain it better than I know or can to you right now. Um but I did enjoy that. I did enjoy the film overall. I would definitely highly recommend it. And I would recommend it to everybody. And I can also understand why it's going to be making a lot of money this weekend. And Obsession is also going to make a lot of money this weekend. And for if I put these two movies up against each other, which is basically impossible not to, because you know they're literally competing for butts and seats, um, or they're helping both of their own films, um, I would give Obsession definitely the edge. I think Obsession is the horror film of the generation, personally. I think it's a generational film. And uh I think the the storytelling in Obsession and the way uh Obsession has maybe one of my favorite film endings of all time. Like it's the ending of Obsession, the final scene, is so goddamn good that whatever issues you might you might have with the film leading up to it, uh, I mean you can't deny how good that ending is. Maybe people disagree with that, but it doesn't seem like they do. Um Backrooms to me leaves a little more to uh desire with its ending. And there are parts I don't know how much I loved the Chuetle breakdown scene in his weird psychedelic kitchen with his, you know, three characters that kind of made sense but kind of didn't. And I think not understanding the relationship he had to those characters and the backrooms itself, I think sort of left me a little lost um as to what I was supportive supposed to take away from it. I didn't really know why things were happening. Um that said, when things were happening and you know the tension and all that ramped up and all the visual uh aesthetics with all the weird sets and the melting furniture and the you know just these weird ideas and choices. I I I was I was absolutely in love with. So it's kind of funny. I feel that obsession filled in gaps that backrooms left, and then backrooms filled in gaps that obsession. Like when I think of the aesthetic of backrooms, I think that beats obsession, even though obsession is a much smaller movie and it's not meant to be as big as Obsession uh backrooms. Um I just visually enjoyed looking at backrooms more, but the storytelling in Obsession to me is I mean it's it's unprecedentedly good. Especially from some such a simple idea and an idea that we feel that we've seen before, you know, just done in a completely new and fresh way. Whereas Backrooms to me, everything about that is original, especially because I haven't seen the series, and I'm just taking it on its face as a movie by itself. I think it's the most original horror idea, horror idea I think I can think of. I don't know, I can't think of a film that was that's more original than this. And uh so that I that I will give it uh its flowers for. But it looks like it's gonna make a lot of money, and again, these two films are changing the game, it's changing everything, and it's dethroning Star Wars. And obviously is already on a bit of a downswing, although it really actually recently isn't, because some of my two favorite Star Wars um series came out within the past year, which was recently Shadow Lord, which is maybe one of the best Star Wars series ever. And it's animated, so people don't take it as serious, but the writing uh and the storytelling and the direction in that series is phenomenal. And then there's Andor Season 2, which is maybe one of the best TV shows of all time. I would argue it's that it's probably my number one. I don't know of a better TV show. Sopranos was number one up until Andor Season Two, and then I have to say, you know what, Andor Season Two just takes it. I rewatch that show constant. I rewatched the second half of that season constantly, just when I'm bored. Um and then Mandalorian and Grogu come out, and I go, this is fine, and I can't wait to show my kids, but it will not it will not be something I personally ever want to revisit on my own. And that's a shame. But it's also very uh it's also very telling of where audiences and the film industry and the art form is as a whole. You know, because I've always said people will go to the will go to the movie theater. People love going to the movie theater. We do not like sitting at home watching stuff on our own. We do if we're having dinner, but we know it's not the same as sitting in a movie theater with your friends or your girlfriend or uh or you know, opening night with a you know on a packed auditorium. Nothing beats that. Your your living room will never compete with that. And you know, fortunately, um Hollywood and Neon and A24 are really giving us reasons to go back, and I have to say I really appreciate that. So, you know, Backrooms is definitely worth checking out. I loved it. It's probably gonna be a movie that we're talking about for a very long time, same as Obsession. And uh, so yeah, that's my review. Again, like, subscribe, tell your friends, and thanks for watching or listening or whatever you're doing. Cheers.