Backrooms

How do you adapt a no-budget, avant garde, YouTube-based anthology series like Backrooms into a mainstream feature film? You could point to Skinamarink as an experimental horror that received a theatrical release. But it was acquired out of a festival, and never reached one-thousand screens. Conversely, A24 approached Kane Parsons about adapting his own series into a feature, meaning he had an actual budget and could expect a wide release. For a first time filmmaker who wants to keep working, that usually means crafting something general audiences have some hope of liking, not just the built-in fandom. So it's unsurprising that he opted not to simply replicate the ultra lo-fi, context-less presentation within which a story gradually emerges over a series of vignettes, where the dialog is as likely to be as flat and expressionless as a corporate training video as it is someone anxiously wondering what the hell is going on.

That said, Parsons did what he could to port it into the larger, more traditional story penned by Will Soodik. As if to assure his fans that what they came for would get here eventually, the opening scene is more or less a re-edited remaster of his very first first Backrooms YouTube video. Until we reach the title card, the camera is entirely first-person, complete with a bunch of whip pans as the unseen, hazmat suit cloaked character looks around the space and investigates the various strange noises, the outstanding sound design (from Eugenio Battaglia and Robert W. Booth) ensuring we feel as tense as they must be.

After that, we leave the space to allow the narrative time to establish a foothold, and the movie's biggest problem comes into focus: the drama is bland and boring.

Read my full review on Pop Culture Maniacs.