Backrooms - Movie Review

The Movie: Backrooms

The Director: Kane Parsons

The Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell

The Story: After a therapist's patient disappears into a dimension beyond reality, she must venture into the unknown to save him.

The Rating: 5 / 10

The Review:

Okay, I'm definitely going to fall into the minority here, but I did not like this movie at all. There was no point to it, none of it made sense, and the whole idea was just silly while it felt like it was trying to be way cooler and edgier than it actually is. Yeah, I get that it was born out of the viral YouTube videos although I feel like, at least for me, that was part of the problem.

I do understand what this movie is trying to do and some of the concepts are quite brilliant, I just feel like the execution as a feature film leaves a lot to be desired. Being intentionally vague and/or ambiguous works if there is a point to it all but this story just doesn't bring anything to the table that might draw me into this world.

I'm sure there will be a fair amount of people who will say I just don't get it and I need to look into the history of the YouTube videos and all that, but the movie really gave me no reason to want to even skim the surface let alone take a deep dive into something that ultimately isn't very interesting. This is one of those cult following type things that you needed to be in on from the beginning to appreciate the subtleties and cool factor and I'm okay with missing that boat, I guess.

From a pure filmmaking perspective, there's some really cool stuff going on when it comes to production design, special effects, and some of the more technical aspects so the movie does have that going for it. It's clear that Parsons is very talented and, thanks to the success of this movie, he'll definitely receive opportunities to show us what else he's capable of.

Thank you for reading this review. Not every movie can hit home or be one of my favorites and I wish I had liked this one a lot more than I did. On to the next one!