It was just a creepy picture on the internet. Now it\u2019s the year\u2019s freakiest film. Its 20-year-old auteur Kane Parsons and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve take us through the terrifying labyrinth<\/p>\n
Chiwetel Ejiofor has been on a lot of movie sets, but Backrooms was something different: a 30,000\u00a0sq ft labyrinth of apparently random corridors and\u00a0chambers, all carpeted, fluorescent lit and decorated in the\u00a0same sickly yellow wallpaper. It was so big that people were getting lost in it, says Ejiofor: \u201cEspecially on those first days. As you try to navigate your way around and you\u2019re like: \u2018I\u2019m sure it\u2019s this door, I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the way.\u2019\u201d He\u2019s laughing at the recollection. \u201cAnd you find yourself just back in the wrong corner of the whole studio and you\u2019re like: \u2018Get me some help!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
This is kind of the point of Backrooms \u2013 the movie and the online phenomenon that spawned it. It\u2019s a concept that takes some unpacking, but as the premise for a buzzy A24 horror freakout, you could summarise it as something like \u201cThe Blair Witch Project meets Severance\u201d or \u201cThe Shining set in an infinite Travelodge\u201dor maybe \u201cthe exact opposite of a Wes Anderson movie\u201d. Comparisons fall short, partly because the Backrooms concept feels as if it\u2019s come from another world \u2013 a parallel dimension, even. Ejiofor concurs: \u201cThere was stuff that we were doing by the end of the film that I was just like: \u2018This is among the most bizarre things I have ever been involved in.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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