Kane Parsons' Backrooms is a fascinating psychological thriller that says much about mental health. The story is loosely based on an urban legend about an unending maze of empty spaces that is popularised by a group of content creators on YouTube. The legend goes that there are monsters in the spaces, and that when you enter them, there is no way out. Parsons cleverly adds an element of psychology to the legend of the labyrinthine space that speaks to the way we compartmentalise trauma. In many ways, the physical rooms that the protagonists enter serve as a mirror into the human mind that bookends trauma with better memories lying in between.
The horror in Backrooms comes from not just the way the characters navigate the liminal spaces but also the 'monsters' they envision inside the subliminal part of their minds. Do these monsters really exist? The film gives enough clues to doubt their existence, such as the appearance of seagulls out of nowhere and morphed figures that resemble the shape and form of the people that enter the rooms.
What about the rooms themselves? Are they really figments of the characters’ imagination, or do they exist in the film? Arguably, the rooms exist, but what the characters see inside these are monsters of their own making. There are symbols suggesting this subtext, such as an outfit with a piece of text about Apartheid. Perhaps the clothing belongs to one of the older victims of the maze. Remember, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has a Black heritage. What if the outfit belongs to Clark's forefather, linking the maze to the generational trauma of South Africa’s Apartheid period?
Then again, the maze does not just trap its victims in the collective horrors of the past. It also makes its 'subjects' face the personal ruins they carry with them.
One way to read Backrooms is to look at it as a philosophical exploration of failure, especially through Clark. The film introduces him as a failed architect turned furniture store owner whose life is actively breaking down under the weight of divorce. He clearly sees himself as a failure by his own standards. While he may not have physically built the maze, Clark becomes the metaphorical architect of the mysteries inside it. The haphazard presentation of objects in the maze hints at the subconscious landscape of a man whose career was supposed to be all about order but instead turns chaotic. His internal chaos drives him to force his colleagues into the rooms, arguably pushing them to their eventual deaths—even putting one of them in an imaginary refrigerator.
Clark’s personal devastation spills outward, which inevitably draws in his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), to his world. When she goes into the maze in search of her patient, only Clark is inside it, in addition to a tall, pirate-like figure with a face that resembles him. Who is the tall man? The only explanation that comes closest to a concrete answer is that the figure is a figment of Mary's overactive imagination. There is something about the maze that triggers trauma in everyone who occupies it.
We know that Mary has a traumatic childhood, where she endured abuse from her tall, psychiatric mother (Krista Kosonen). She is also taking medication to cope with her mental concerns. This would explain why she has a close bond with her patient, Clark. It is only when the pirate figure chases Mary aggressively does she even respond with hostility to it. When she kills the 'creature’ with a stone, it serves as a massive psychological release for her. Essentially, she uses it to crush a monster that appears to represent both the patient she apparently fails to save and the childhood ghosts she carries within her. Remember, at the start of the film, she takes the stone during the destruction of her old home where she lived with her abusive mother. Perhaps killing Clark with it releases the ghosts of her past, freeing her from the trauma.
The fact that the monster has Clark’s face seems to suggest that she suffers from guilt. Arguably, Mary feels guilty for not being able to help Clark come out of the maze in which he has trapped himself. She also appears to struggle with her own sense of underachievement. When Mary watches an advertisement where she promotes herself on TV late at night, she has this forlorn look on her face that suggests professional dissatisfaction. The final sequence where Mary ends up in a research institution ties into the above interpretation. By leaving the explanation ambiguous, Parsons allows for the interpretation: Mary does not escape a supernatural dimension but rather has a profound psychological break. While wandering through the Backrooms, her subconscious desperately tries to heal her childhood wounds.
Suffice to say Backrooms is the ultimate Lynchian film, only one with a 20-year-old filmmaker at the helm. A mind-bender that makes us question its own reality even as it keeps us searching for the solutions.