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I don’t know if this tapped into my fears, fed them or just downright created them but it really creeped me out. I wasn’t frightened at any point but I was consistently and deeply unsettled. The movie takes its time, for something so focused on human psychology and psychosis it only has minimal character development and it doesn’t explain it’s conceit at all but it is a brilliantly imaginative, captivating and immensely successful piece of filmmaking. 

Let me explain the relevance of my own context to this movie. I have a very bad sense of direction. When I am walking in an unfamiliar area I need to mentally create snapshots of key locations that I pass so that I am able to navigate my way back again later. This is relatively straightforward in urban areas but I have genuine trouble in forests and do get quite nervous that I’ll not get out. I wouldn’t say it is my greatest fear but it is the closest I have to any kind of phobia.

In this film Chiwetel Ejiofor’s lonely store owner finds his way into a seemingly never ending and apparently supernatural series of rooms and corridors hidden downstairs in his shop. As he passes deeper and deeper past nondescript yellow walls and doorways into this surreal and foreboding maze it did generate in me quite a visceral response and a tangible sense of dread as I could imagine myself in this situation. As I say, even with my general dysorienta I don’t know if this idea was something that was already going to keep me awake at night but it certainly made me very uncomfortable watching it on screen. The addition of some ominous shadows and alarming noises as he journeys through this dull canary coloured hellscape only added to the overall effect.

Of course in the end the story needs to deliver on some of the promise of the world it creates and at this point it gets a lot less subtle but I admired where it ultimately went and love that it defies any definitive explanation. It is not clear if it is ghosts, or rampaging id made real, government experimentation, dark memory, evil spirits, spooky dimensions or some combination of all of these but it definitely makes you think in a way the majority of cinema does not. 

It was also made for very little money in mainstream Hollywood terms (and whether this was the original plan or not it is certainly getting a mainstream Hollywood release). $10 million is no small change but also in this context it kind of is. The Drama, also in cinemas right now with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, which has no big action scenes or special effects, cost three times that much. This movie does have some visual effects and a portion of the budget would have been spent of its own impressive cast. Sentimental Value’s Renate Reinsve stars as well so that’s two high profile Oscar nominees and one of them is a CBE for his services to the arts. Mostly though I think they coughed up for the sets. They actually built 30,000 square feet of rooms and corridors which is more than half of a full football pitch. The idea that the nasty lemon labyrinth actually existed and actors and crew had to go into it brings me out in a cold sweat. The good news for everyone is that this has made $135 million at the box office so it was money well spent by any measure. It is great that a movie that is mostly built on good ideas is doing so well. 

The original conception for this was actually a single photo that someone took of a real corridor in a Wisconsin furniture store. Proving that any old crap can hit big online this then launched an internet craze for posting similar images until teenager Kane Parsons turned it into a successful animated web series. This movie, directed by Parsons still only twenty, effectively depicts what those creepy pics only promised and he has done a very good job. 

Backrooms then announces a new voice in contemporary cinema, proves that weird internet stuff can lead to genuinely clever filmmaking and the whole thing may present a new age in the medium where YouTube rather than bookshelves provides the most inspiration. All I really care about though is how it freaked me out and for that more than anything, I really applaud it. This is a very impressive movie, try not to get lost in it.

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