Backrooms

Grade: B

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive will turn 25 this fall. It, like Backrooms, is a well-made movie that poses more questions than answers. My initial gut reaction from Mulholland Drive was that I really enjoyed what I saw, but we don’t know what it means, so I felt frustrated and even angry. I wondered why a director would make their audience feel so stupid. Tie it up by the end, please. However, I let it sit with me, and settled on the A grade. I named it the best movie of 2001.

My attitude has changed. There is such a thing as too much explanation. Backrooms is one of those movies to surrender to, and just take in what you’re given. It’s carried by two great performances from Oscar nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) and Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value). He plays Clark, the owner of a sprawling furniture store. It isn’t bringing in the business. The employees outnumber the customers, if there are any, and the hum of the fluorescent lights is the loudest sound there.

Clark’s wife has kicked him out of the house. He is attempting to work through it in therapy with Mary (Reinsve). He has been living at the store. Plenty of things to sleep on in there, right? One night, he discovers he can walk through the wall on the lower level. It takes him into a vast world of yellow walls and hallways. It is surreal, foreboding, and appears deserted, but ominous noises and shadows suggest otherwise. 

I’m trying my best to describe it for you, but as Clark tells Mary in a session, it’s like describing a dog to someone who has never seen a dog before. How would you do it? In one of many plot points without a clear explanation, Mary reacts as if she knows about this place, and perhaps its origin. Clark explores it with a video camera – one of those big ones from 1990, when this is set. The movie adopts the “found footage” approach for some of its runtime, but not too much.

The score sets a wonderful mood. Many of the jump scares are either a sound effect from the music on the soundtrack, or a character dropping something. The final sequence in the backrooms is dialogue-driven, before turning to action. Somebody is chased by something, but it’s not one of those horror creatures who is impossible to take down, and keeps on coming no matter what.

The sets are creative, playing around with gravity and perspective. Doors are on the ceiling. Passageways get narrower. It can look like an office building, a spa, or a multilevel skyscraper. This is a movie with imagination, which brought to mind Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and Dark City. It kept me guessing, and – let’s me real – left me guessing.

Backrooms will probably top the box office for the new releases out this weekend. It has showings almost every hour, with packed houses. At my crowded viewing, nobody was talking or on their phones. Everyone was intently focused on the film. It ends with hints of light shed on it, but don’t expect a satisfactory resolution. There will be people coming out of the woodwork who will have it all figured out, and I can’t wait to go online to read the interpretations. Everybody will describe the dog in a different way.

Grade: B