PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Get lost in the beyond.
Synopsis
Taking place in 1990, Backrooms follows Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a failed architect and owner of a struggling furniture store. Recently divorced from his wife, Clark visits therapist Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), yet their conversations are ineffective as Clark has trouble changing his bad habits. Clark discovers a passageway beyond the walls of his store’s basement, leading to a surreal, liminal world filled with endless hallways and doorways that seemingly go on with no end in sight. Determined to find an explanation for all this, Clark finds himself lost further into the Backrooms, both physically and psychologically.
My thoughts
If you’re not quite sure what “the Backrooms” are, here’s the original 4chan post that pretty much sums it all up: “If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
That post first appeared online in May 2019, creating a sort of internet urban legend surrounding the idea of the Backrooms, with countless people putting their own spin on the idea. There’s not really one singular version, but the core idea remains the same: the further you explore the Backrooms, the more lost you become as the environments increasingly get more surreal and nightmare-like. Oh yeah, you’re also being watched and inevitably chased by something, so let’s just say, it’s not a place you would want to visit.
Back to the Backrooms
While the Backrooms have their origins in the anonymous ethers of the net, they were realized in cinematic form on YouTube by filmmaker Kane Parsons, aka Kane Pixels, in 2022. At the age of only 16, Parsons made the 10-minute short film Backrooms (Found Footage), using the 3D rendering software Blender to create the world of the Backrooms. Parsons went on to create 23 more short films centered around the concept, creating his own specific lore surrounding it…