Backrooms
Walking out of this into a mostly empty cinema in the hometown I effectively abandoned 20 years ago was a perfect and unsettling postscript to this excellent film.
I go on about how sensorily flat films feel lately but this bucks the trend with numerous excellent visual and audio choices. The 90s aesthetic occupies an uncanny sweet spot between pastiche and historical accuracy. The obvious game influences (Silent Hill 2 chief among them) are deliberate and curated with a resistance towards their cornier impulses. It’s exciting to have a young filmmaker demonstrate this kind of insight and skill from the jump. The gen z cultural ascendancy continues. Extra credit for understanding how fucking terrifying slightly-opened doors are!
Like all great psychological horror, Backrooms' ambiguity allows you to bring your own shit to it. I very much engaged with the idea that therapy is subordinate to our determination to change, ultimately being a minor accessory to that central endeavour and probably quite harmful if you do not really want to do it. Otherwise enjoyed the intelligent nods to patriarchy, intergenerational exploitation, the burdens of trauma. Beyond the aesthetic appeal this film clearly has a lot on its mind and I appreciated that.
There’s no need to state how good Eijofor and Reinsve are, of course they are, but what’s really impressive is how comparatively reserved their performances are. Lesser horror films would give in to hysteria when it all kicks off, but both actors opt for a tense composure that is much more unnerving. A willingness to let them make those kind of choices is another check for Kane Parsons' talent as a director. Renate’s gradual look of resignation in the penultimate scene is as good as anything she’s done with Trier. Her body of work continues to amass into something great.