BACKROOMS

Name: BACKROOMS
Item: BACKROOMS
Author: Review

"What’s Behind These Walls?"

Family Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

BACKROOMS is a cryptic horror movie. Clark, divorced and unsuccessful furniture store owner, is drawn into a world behind his storeroom walls, where life is distorted, confused and terrifying. He secures the aid of his store assistant and her boyfriend to capture the Backrooms on video, which takes them to their deaths. Dr. Mary Kline, Clark’s shrink, looks for Clark and enters the Backrooms. There, she sees a monster kill Clark, and the monster starts chasing her. Mary escapes but ends up in the hands of some researchers who had been watching them. Mary must fight against fragmented duplicates of people from the real world to survive. More disturbing violence ensues.

BACKROOMS is well-crafted, but the plot sometimes is confusing. Many plot points that are briefly mentioned aren’t addressed or explained later, leaving viewers trying to make sense of what really happens. BACKROOMS has a strong humanist worldview. It portrays life as uncertain, confusing and chaotic, where no answers exist and there’s only death. Finally, BACKROOMS has extreme and disturbing violence plus about 40 strong obscenities and three strong profanities.

Content:

(HH, O, LLL, VVV):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong but not didactic humanist worldview portrays life as uncertain, confusing and chaotic, where man dominates man, and when all is said and done, no answers exist, and there’s only death, with some hints of demonic activity;

Foul Language:

At least 60 often repeated obscenities (including about 40 “f” words), two strong profanities using the name of Jesus, one GD profanity, and some light profanities;

Violence:

Some extreme and strong disturbing violence with blood such as a monster bites someone and sprays blood, a human head sits in a refrigerator, people are shown disfigured or missing body parts, a human bites another human in the stomach and scalps another person, images of a blood trail in the floor, a person hits a monster’s head with a chunk of concrete;

Sex:

No depicted or implied sex, but a scene lightly suggests that a man spent the night with a woman;

Nudity:

Brief upper male nudity and a woman wears clothe revealing her tummy;

Alcohol Use:

Some alcohol use and drunkenness, alcohol abuse by the male lead, which apparently led to the problems he has had with his wife;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking, but one character takes pills after being overwhelmed at a party, and there are some other references to being high; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

A mother character seems paranoid and mentally off, and the movie’s ending is confusing and tragic, and leaves a hopeless feeling in the viewer.

More Detail:

BACKROOMS introduces viewers to alcoholic and recently divorced Clark, who lives inside his unsuccessful furniture store. A high electricity bill and flickering lights leads him to three electrical breaker switches, which are at a strange angle and which don’t control electrical power to anything. Clark sees a light emitting. He discovers he’s able to enter into the wall where he finds a labyrinth of yellow walls, endless rooms and corridors, furniture, and an unseen creature. A scientist watches Clark from a surveillance camera.

Clark informs his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline, who had a traumatic childhood, about his Backrooms experience but can’t convince her this place exists. He secures the help of his assistance manager, Kat, and her boyfriend, Bobby, to video record the Backrooms where Bobby is attacked and killed by an unseen creature and is separated from Kat.

Dr. Kline is drawn into looking for Clark and enters the Backrooms. Clark chokes Mary till she’s unconscious, then ties her to a chair where she witnesses a pirate monster kill Clark. Mary is chased by the monster. Mary escapes but ends up in the hands of some researchers who had been watching them. Mary also must fight against fragmented duplicates of people from the real world to survive. More disturbing violence ensues.

BACKROOMS is a well-crafted, mesmerizing psychological horror film that captures the viewer’s attention to its end. It has strong acting by Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark and Renate Reinsve as Dr. Mary Kline). However, the plot sometimes is confusing. Many plot points that are briefly mentioned aren’t addressed or explained later, leaving viewers trying to make sense of what really happens.

BACKROOMS has a strong humanist worldview. It portrays life as confusing, chaotic and beyond our understanding. When all is said and done, no answers exist, and there’s only death, with some hints of demonic activity. BACKROOMS also has about 40 “f” words, a few strong profanities, and some extreme and often disturbing violence. So, MOVIEGUIDE® finds the movie abhorrent and unacceptable.