POPCORN REVIEWSS

Written by Will Soodik, the core sentiment tagged to the Backrooms is trauma mixed with ambiguity, even when you are introduced to its two protagonists – Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Mary (Renate Reinsve). Interestingly, both these characters are tied with trauma – the latter being subjected to a generational trauma revolving around her house demolition and the agoraphobic mother, and the former having marital issues with his wife while being an alcoholic and a failed architect who is running a furniture store against his will. Hence, trauma remains an important ingredient that forms the basis of the drama that would soon  be consumed by the horrors of the subconscious.

The concept of the backrooms has a foreshadow of flickering lights – a form of symbolism for glitching of reality that lures Clark into the backrooms. The subtext remains the tipping point of Clarke’s psyche – wherein his reality is glitching, while pushing him into a realm of madness. Here, the backrooms can be understood as a printing machine of sorts – often scanning your brain, identifying the portions of comforting trauma only to transform them into cutouts of people, labelling them as ‘Still Lives’, and also creating the worst version of individuals while labelling them as ‘Monsters’. You get shadowy glimpses of the latter in Clark’s first encounter, before he decides to lure his manager and her boyfriend in order to prove his point to Mary.

One of the best passages of the drama remains the trio’s tryst with the backrooms – a haunting trail that leads upto a bloodbath. But the symbolism remains a crucial element in the mix – particularly given how both characters with Clark are eventually killed off. It remains a representation of how Clark’s fractured personality has adverse effects on people around him, either consuming them completely, or acting as ‘still lives’ in his subconscious state, something that his mind gravitates towards – a low-level form of negativity. It is similar to the concept of how negativity attracts more bouts of negativity – something that you witness in the form of cutouts of his wife with red hair at the end, or his grandfather who keeps flickering the lights.

Likewise, the same form of symbolism extends to Mary also when she enters the backrooms. You see versions of the furniture clamped up at various intervals, a reference to her traumatic past with respect to her house’s demolition. In the same breath, you also get contrasting representations of trauma when she stumbles upon Clark for the first time in the backrooms. The latter is at his tipping point willing to stay in the shadows of his negativity, while there is still hope for Mary.

Ironically in the scene when Clark finally wants to change, he is killed by his Monstrous version – an intimidating figure on the lines of a version that is built around the mascot that he dresses up as for television. It remains the worst version of himself because he has always dreamt of being an architect while ragefully having to appear as a mascot for his furniture shop. And the scene of his killing is representative of his rage consuming him.

There is a hint of capitalism in the third act with the introduction of an organization called Async which had accidently stumbled upon the backrooms while researching on MRI machines. But the subtext lies in the context of humans trying to map and control the subconscious side of the human mind, while wanting to colonize it for energy – a form of foolishness given how every mind is different while reacting to trauma and emotions differently. And the final scene representing a ‘still life’ version of Mary is symbolic of the same – with the backrooms creating a version of trauma inside it after scanning through her mind. The screenplay remains a classic case of the subtext overpowering the horror elements, in a concept that remains an absolute winner for me.