Backrooms

BACKROOMS
Director ~ Kane Parsons
Writers ~ Will Soodik, Kane Parsons
2026 ~ USA-Canada
Stars ~ Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass

I would say my fear of being trapped in another threatening dimension or time was unlocked first by ‘The Amazing Mister Blunden’ when I was a kid. And then there was Sapphire being trapped in a painting in ‘Sapphire and Steel’, or even the blue door in ‘From, beyond the Grave’ was scary. Strangely, I don’t remember ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ bothering me. The idea that you won’t get back was frightening.  Recently, there are entries like ‘Vivarium’, ‘Exit 8’ or ‘The Rose to Nevada’ and now ‘Backrooms’, all which tap into adult neurosis in alternate time-traps and dimensions. This is the kind of thing that Sapphire and Steel were dispatched to sort out.

Kane Parsons' original YouTube series ‘Backrooms’ is told through found footage, corporate videos, stills, muzak and drone, alternating between seemingly prosaic vignettes that contain clues and p.o.v. search-and-scares. It also suffers from that found footage annoyance of lack of framing or/and going to black or simply being undecipherable at key moments. By the end of the fourth episode, it is made clear that found footage isn’t the only medium the series will use. It taps into a truly nightmarish vision of endless bruise-yellow corridors that never end, that contains sudden half-seen threats that stomp and yowl after you. The sound-design is also key: crackling protective suit dialogue, drone, silence, static. Frequent bad camerawork and sound are features of the medium, often used to leapfrog budgetary restraints as much as putting you in the thick of fear, but here it is also the texture. However, there is no doubt that there is a full story coherent in the background, and the exposition, when it comes, is relayed by excellent voice actor work that makes even an extended episode about the light fixtures being normal fascinating and uncanny. Short bursts of clues and mystery that you can jigsaw together, ‘Backrooms’ is made by and for the YouTube generation, spawned from 4Chan, Creepypasta and social media threads and fan speculations. Creative types no longer need wait for the frustrating and negligible whims of studios.

Parsons comes across as an extremely articulate and non-posturing twenty-year-old who is totally attuned to and articulate on contemporary mediums and tools like YouTube and Blender. His fascination with liminal spaces is at the core of the ‘Backrooms’ concept, and essentially being trapped in them, or the half-remembered remnants of them, with added occasional malevolent entities. So, you get the science-fiction mystery and the “monster-in-a-maze” element, always half-seen. Yet in the original series there was also a victim that just wastes away to death because he can’t get out, which is surely just as frightening. What is obvious is that Parsons is totally in control of this story and that everyone else has caught up and now we have this film: a film totally in tune with the ambience of contemporary horror with A24 arthouse sensibilities, but also just with the anxieties of open world games (he namechecks ‘Half-Life’ and sandbox creation games like ‘Minecraft’).

But the film also stands on its own, even if the wider context of the series heightens it. It feels relevant because Parsons is tapping into the very zeitgeist of the modern gaming age and because he most evidently isn’t just winging it. Like the series, the film starts like a like an instalment of the series of the ‘V/H/S’ franchise, even down to the P.O.V. going crazy and not seeing what exactly is going on when things hit pitch. However, that is not all of Parsons’ tricks, for the depth and assuredness he presents and develops character here is not something the format of the original series promised. The successful short bursts that the YouTube series offers paves way for the excellent performance by Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark. Clark is already in a liminal state – estranged from him wife, living in the furniture store that he owns – when we meet him: what is satisfying is that everything has a logical progression in that his already established temper leads him to an outburst that leads him to discovering the backrooms. Ejiofor gives a very real and brilliant portrayal of a character type that is all too recognisable: stuck in resentment for himself and others, seemingly always at battle with both, and therefore suspectable to the paradox of the Backrooms.

When things turn a little ‘Maniac’, it feels a let-down of the nuanced work Ejiofor has done: such obvious horror tropes seem unnecessary. In introducing the backrooms idea, Parson says:

“So it’s kind of like a very benign version of … purgatory or hell myth, but without any kind of damnation aspect. It’s inherently a force of nature that you can’t negotiate with, and it doesn’t pull you in because you’ve done something wrong. It does it because reality broke.”

The enigma around the backrooms ultimately remains, and indeed does not need explanation, but that it is partially a huge unregulated therapy session for Clark tells again of filmmakers being too self-aware and not letting the subconscious do the work (one can imagine the deliberate lacunae David Lynch would have left). There is platitudinous therapy speak wrapped around the whole affair, almost sinisterly. Yet that the Backrooms feed from the trauma of those that enter its endless hallways has been evident in its building mythos, but not quite so overtly stated. The looming entity derived from Clark, staggering around in disturbing in its uncanny cartoonishness is enough.

Or as Brian Tallerico writes, “While “Backrooms” finds some twisted imagery along the way, it does have a bad habit of trying to explain itself more than it should.” The performances are high calibre, the conceit is unforgettable, the plotting solidly considered, the mystery tantalising, the true scope available with further watching of the series. There is an “almost-great” feel to the end product, but the promise of ‘Backrooms’ and Kane Parsons are considerable, should you go down the rabbit hole. Certainly, if it works for you, you’ll be wanting more.

Walkabout

 

WALKABOUT
Director ~ Nicolas Roeg
Writers ~ Edward Bond, Donald G. Payne, Nicolas Roeg
1971, United Kingdom-Australia-United States
Stars ~ Jenny Agutter, David Gulpilil, Luc Roeg

Nicolas Roeg’s first film ‘Performance’ was directed with Donald Cammell, but he was an established cinematographer beforehand (‘Fahrenheit 451’ and, notably, ‘The Masque of the Red Death’). Both Roeg and Cammel went on to exhibit exemplary powers and skill with editing, although only the former crossed over. Roeg carried this on with a succession of classics from ‘Walkabout’, his debut as a solo director, ‘Don’t Look Now’, ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ and ‘Bad Timing’: a stunning run. Even later, lesser films such as ‘Eureka’, ‘Insignificance’, ‘Track 29’ and ‘The Witches’ had a lot to offer with his oddball sensibility.

The novel ‘Walkabout’ by James Vance Marshall, published in 1959 originally as ‘The Children’, is a slender affair with a slim story and a travelogue sensibility, showcasing indigenous tricks of survival, the outback scenery and wildlife. James Vance Marshll was a pseudonym for Donald G. Payne, the former being a man who lived in the outback that Payne knew.  The plot: two American children – a young American boy and his adolescent sister – are the sole survivors of a plane crash in the outback and only survive by stumbling upon an Aboriginal youth on “walkabout”, the indigenous rite-of-passage ritual of survival in Australia’s unforgiving wild. The culture clash is both sweet and ultimately tragic and Marshall leaves much unspoken.

Roeg’s ‘Walkabout’ announces his fierce translation of a young adult novel with shock tactics, unpredictable yet fluid cross-cutting editing that moves across time, memory, space and place, held together with the drift of John Barry’s luscious score and reaching a replication of experience rarely achieved in film. Certainly, it does not feel like a children’s benign odyssey anymore, however much the book has been marketed as such. It does this by marooning the children not with a plane crash, but their father’s breakdown (presumably caused by the modern world), murder attempt and suicide. This is a smart narrative change, saving budget but also announces a world of danger and unanswered questions. Your class privilege won’t save you, is not even a safe place ~ and in this adaptation, it is a particular English class privilege.

Like the prose, Roeg’s vision never loses sight of the wildlife simply carrying on while these two alien interlopers of civilisation try to survive. There are many startling shots of scenery and wildlife throughout the film: with a tiny crew of six people, Roeg created a phantasmagoria of improvised beauty and brutality. Always, his editing conveys layers that never lose sight of a bigger picture: they sleep and the dissolves convey their dreaming; as they wrestle with what to do next, the radio talks of mankind’s evolution to a “perpetual succession of comfortable shopkeepers”; or the sun and moon sounding like radio transmitters, or collecting memories on the airwaves. The adage goes that if you don’t notice the editing then the editor is doing their job, but with Roeg the editing is a character, acting like an omnipotent observer, like the universe or fate or Greek Gods playing around with the protagonists. Always a wider and comparative view is communicated: when the white kids are playing in a tree, it is juxtaposed with Aboriginals playing with the burn-out husk of the car; carving up a wallaby is intercut with a butcher’s shop. James Barry’s lush score and the sound design are integral to this, even lapsing into diegetic pop at moments (there is almost always the radio as a symbol of society broadcasting both its inanities, white culture and music). 

 

Roeg had apparently planned to adapt this book for years, for so long that he had co-directed ‘Performance’, his eldest son had grown too old for the part that his youngest took and Agutter had grown a few years into the much more suitable sixteen-seventeen. Agutter’s cut-glass Englishness and professionalism is perfect for a girl that can’t quite adapt from her bubble of civilisation, berating her younger brother for not caring for his uniform in perilous conditions, who thinks that the indigenous boy should know what English if she just talks more forcefully. Hers is a cultural superiority that cannot see or break out of its narrow-mindedness and her persistence in keeping a stiff upper lip are alternately heroic and annoying. She is almost the antagonist in her stubborn resolve not to integrate. Young Luc’s young performance is all young roughness, and it cannot be understated how effective his natural disarming nature is. Gulpilil’s natural grace and openness is warm and fascinating. These make for contrasting yet complimentary performances.

Agutter speaks fondly of David Gulpilil, who obviously made a strong impression on her, and warmly of Roeg. Gulpilil – whose name is misspelt as Gumpilil in the credits – went on to have an acting career for the rest of his life. Lucian Roeg (credited as Lucien John for the film) also speaks of the filming as a fondly remembered time with his whole family. He went on to be a producer ofmany noteworthy indie films (including for the Tom Waits live film ‘Big Time’) but has no further acting credits.

In the book, the white foreigners bring germs and a lack of understanding that brings about the death of the Aboriginal boy; it is his nakedness that the girl can’t get over; indeed, nudity itself proves almost insurmountable for her. In the film it is more sexual awakening mixed with this lack and fear of understanding. The film conveys sexual tension through suggestive close-ups and glances. She becomes increasingly frustrating in her boneheaded adherence to civilisation, although this surely stems also from fear.

At one point, the girl assumes that they are the first white people the youth has seen, but Roeg also shows how busy things are as the children roam oblivious. There are also weather balloons, hunting and what appears to be the exploitation of the locals. There is a great sadness when the youth becomes serious with his advances rejected by the girl who doesn’t understand, and a realisation that this civilisation that is portrayed as unfriendly and crude will reject and destroy his culture. But this is not to say the film is sentimental about the opposing Aborigine culture, making killing as much an ancestral artform, hanging corpses in trees, surrounded by flies. He also does not possess the imagination to think beyond his culture to communicate more than survival tips. The girl realises too late the Eden she experienced. These are the tragedy.

‘Walkabout’ may possess a simple and slender premise, but it is thematically rich: coming-of-age, culture-clash, class, survival, existence and nature, as Roger Ebert says, “the mystery of communication”.   Its use of editing, imagery and symbolism are unmatched in unlocking these wider contemplations on culture, memory and experience, and ultimately it is enchanting and very, very moving.