Commentary: ‘Backrooms’ Sets Itself Up To Fail
by Frank Martin
A lot of stories try to create audience interest through mystery. This can be extremely useful as the audience is engaged to uncover the story’s secrets. However, mystery can be a double-edged sword. If the answers aren’t satisfying enough, the film can feel flat and incomplete. Another drawback: the film simply doesn’t slove the mystery at all, leaving unanswered questions for the audience to linger with. Backrooms sets up a lot of mystery with its premise. There are so many questions to be answered regarding the backrooms themselves as well as the beings encountered within them. Unfortunately, the film sets such a high bar for itself to answer these questions that it ultimately fails to give a satisfying conclusion.
— Spoilers Follow —
The story of Backrooms features two separate protagonists. The first is Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a depressed furniture salesman who regularly sees Mary (Renate Reinsve) for therapy. One day, he discovers a hidden and mysterious entrance in the basement of his store. This entrance leads to a never-ending series of rooms that appear to defy the laws of physics. He eventually becomes obsessed with the space, leading Mary to grow worried about him. She goes in search of him, discovers the backrooms, and is subsequently kidnapped by him. Clark explains his theory to her that the backrooms are a deformed mirror image of things in the real world. Eventually, he is killed by a monstrous pirate version of himself. Mary manages to escape and is rescued by a mysterious company called Async, which has dedicated itself to investigating the backrooms.
The film largely does nothing to explain the nature or origins of the backrooms. Clark offers his speculation as to what they are — which appears to be correct — but this is a relatively small part of the film and never confirmed. The true nature of the backrooms and how these distorted memories are created within it are never touched upon. Audiences need to perform a lot of conjecture and theorizing to even begin forming their own ideas of how and why the backrooms exist. The film itself fails to supply any answers because the mystery is almost too great to solve. Any explanation would have fell short of the sheer wonder of the backrooms and the impressive scale of the liminal spaces it generates.
Backrooms is now streaming on HBO Max.
