How exactly do you make a movie based on a place whose main defining factor is a complete absence of almost anything at all?
That’s the question that has been bothering me ever since A24 announced the release of its Backrooms-centric horror, which is due out next month. Because the Backrooms, an iconic creepypasta series that sprang from a 4Chan thread in 2019, is very much based on just how abjectly unremarkable it is – so much so that it edges over into a kind of uncanny valley place of discomfort. As a poster in the original thread described it, the Backrooms are a place “where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in”. It’s a horror of the ordinary, the unremarkable, the distinctly humdrum, and that, while it’s an interesting concept, is one tough sell for a full-length feature.
But, with the trailer for the movie dropping this week, now seems like a good time to talk a little about the Backrooms movie. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the trailer, and figure out whether this cinematic venture into the Backrooms might actually work.
I think the biggest thing this movie has going for it is that Clinton Kane is the director on this particular project; even though he’s only twenty, he directed a popular found footage-ish series on the Backrooms that helped bring the setting into more prominence online. Judging by this trailer, Kane is bringing plenty of the same factors that made his original series such a hit, such as the found footage focus, a few nods towards the monsters that featured in his version of the Backrooms, and even a nod to the original Backrooms image that started this whole story in the first place. There’s undoubtedly a whole lot more polish in this version, even just from this trailer; I still can’t believe that Chiwetel Ejiofor is going to be starring in this movie, an actor who has never given less than 110% and doesn’t seem to be lacking that here. The Backrooms have a very distinct visual identity, all those sickly yellows and dreamlike impossibilities, and there are a few glimpses of that here, even if the trailer holds back on anything too explicit.
It’s really good to see studios tapping in to the talent and skills of someone who has already shown themselves to have a solid understanding of what makes these stories work. With the recent success of Iron Lung, I think there’s some proof that working with people who had a hand in making these stories so big in the first place is the way to go for a big-screen adaptation; of course, making the jump from niche indie productions to full-scale A24 releases is a hell of a career move, but when you’re briding the gap between these two mediums, you need to put someone at the helm who gets what people are looking for when they come to a Backrooms story. Internet horror is so new to the mainstream, with releases like Jane Schoenbrun’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair making use of ARGs to tell its unsettling and effective story, and to make the jump from forum post to feature film, you really need someone there who understands the fundamentals of this particularly creepypasta and why it made such an impact in the first place.
I would love to hear what you made of this trailer, and whether you think a movie should ever have been on the cards for the Backrooms; do you think it’s going to be a flop or do you have some confidence in this version of the story? Let me know in the comments below!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via entertainment.ie)
No But Listen 