Backrooms and Obsession: New talent in horror

By Brontë H. Lacsamana, Reporter

Movie Review
Backrooms
Directed by Kane Parsons
Obsession
Directed by Curry Barker

THERE’S no better way to regain faith in the horror genre than by seeing promising feature films from young, newbie directors. YouTuber-turned-horror filmmakers Kane Parsons and Curry Barker have turned out surprise hits in the US box office, both of which are now showing in Philippine cinemas.

Parsons, at the age of 20, gained fame for his video game-centric YouTube channel as well as his Backrooms short film and web-series, which he was able to develop into a full-length film with the help of production companies like Atomic Monster and distributor A24.

Meanwhile, Barker, 26, who also made short films released online, got to pitch his concept for Obsession to Tea Shop Productions. It was eventually produced by Blumhouse Productions and picked up by Focus Features and Universal Pictures for distribution.

Both horror films are a culmination of strong online followings and years of indie storytelling skills forged from making numerous videos.

BACKROOMS
The psychological horror in Backrooms brings to life the insidious, inexplicable architecture of the mind. Given that it is based on the uncanny nostalgic effect that liminal spaces have on the human psyche and the subsequent internet phenomenon of sharing eerie photos that arose inspired by this, it’s no surprise that Backrooms excels in its dense atmosphere.

The two leads, divorced alcoholic and furniture salesman Clark (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) have their respective hang-ups and traumas manifest in the physical spaces that they explore. Both in the real world and in the backrooms that Clark discovers in the basement of his furniture store, the loops in their lives intertwine with the massive, looping underground maze of strange office and home interiors.

People who’ve seen the grainy images of yellowish washed-out walls, lone pieces of furniture, and dusty indoor swimming pools circulating online to the moody beats of electronic music producer Instupendo will find a sense of satisfaction seeing that odd internet-born aesthetic playing out on the big screen. Meanwhile, the chronically online who’ve seen Parsons’ previous work might not be as impressed since he only delivers more of the same, including the vague sci-fi elements, just on a bigger scale.

What I find interesting is how the outside world is shot like an average, polished present-day movie despite being set in 1991, and you wouldn’t be able to tell unless you look closely at the quintessentially ’90s furniture and fashion. It just all feels so current. You half-expect someone to pull out a smartphone, and only when the characters enter the backrooms does the film really take on the found footage analog quality we expect, tying back to the melancholy for the past that permeates the narrative.

In short, it’s like describing the ’90s to someone who’s never seen the ’90s (quoting a similar phrase said by Clark in the film). At some point, the backrooms exploration plays like a vintage indie horror game, which is when it really shines, backed by an ambient score that calmly builds and disappears. The liminal spaces concept becomes singular in the hands of Parsons, whose Gen Z outlook on aesthetics that are squarely before his time make him best equipped to repurpose visual and sonic elements to convey present-day ennui and self-awareness that are ultimately very current.

It’s also fitting that Reinsve’s character is a therapist who must traverse the complex interiority of the mind, giving voice to the nameless feeling we get looking at places that represent in-betweens in our lives. If you can get past the slight Norwegian accent, her distressed acting that ranges from subtle to fully panicked depending on the scene, bounces off Ejiofor’s manic desperation well. His spiraling is played as something tragic yet believable. The downside is that the therapy speak the script makes them say comes off a bit stilted, with dialogue only at times directly addressing things as real conversations do, too heavy-handed in expressing the themes that foreground the entire piece.

Here lies the film’s biggest fault — how perhaps it is too hyper-aware and actively attempting to be the cultural touchpoint for a zeitgeist fixated on nostalgia. And that touchpoint it does become, something you imagine people two or three decades from now looking back on to understand the angst gripping the collective psyche of the late 2010s and early 2020s. Things never getting better, people never moving forward, true enjoyment only found in the repeated act of remembering (and misremembering) the mundane.

Those lopsided chairs, nonsensical hidden doors, reversed stop signs, haunting indoor pools, eerily lit Christmas-themed rooms, and deformed remnants of people were so well-designed. If only the film shed a bit of its self-important, discursive arthouse quality and leaned into the weird, chaotic, funhouse horror of it all for their inherent mysterious power to be more viscerally felt.

OBSESSION
The premise and set-up for Obsession are straightforward, with a young man named Bear (played by Michael Johnston) having a crush on a girl in his friend group, Nikki (Inde Navarrete), who doesn’t like him back. When he makes a wish on a vintage toy for her to love him more than anyone in the whole world, the wish unexpectedly comes true and he bites off more than he can chew. The disastrous effects are felt immediately as she transforms into a terrifyingly obsessive girlfriend, and her behavior ramps up toward the shocking, grotesque heights you fully expect when love crosses over to madness.

Obsession is a solid crowd pleaser horror film. It caters to the men who would be scared by the concept of a drastically infatuated girlfriend, and the women who would be scared by the idea of a man who would take advantage of them without their consent. There’s quite a bit to glean here about how love can’t be built on self-serving intentions, and the inability to contend with a person’s complex interiority once the rose-colored glasses come off. It gets horrific when we glimpse the real Nikki still in there, a trapped and unwilling party to the toxic relationship that Bear allows to supplant her life — all for the pretense of finally having his coveted romance.

Everyone will surely come away praising Navarrete, whose contorted body movements and facial expressions that teeter from romcom cutesy to downright creepy make Nikki chilling, but Johnston as the nice yet spineless Bear delivers as well. We go off his horrified reactions and dumb decisions following Nikki’s violence, with moments of tension and fright placed perfectly to get a rise out of a nearly full cinema of teenagers still on summer break. (Fans of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse will spot a certain homage in one scene.) Even the thoughtful lighting, which makes use of shadows to elevate the horror, adds to the fright.

Where the film falls short is allowing a bit more room for Nikki to be sympathized with, her victimization already played for scares further stripping her of agency. It’s expected given the narrative conceit of having Bear as the main character, but the film need not be crueler than it already is about the hapless victim’s ordeal. Her erratic behavior, often mistaken for an altered state or hysteria, felt more like extreme torture than any form of fighting back. Even the ending (without spoiling) felt too easy and quick.

One thing that works is how the logic of the One Wish Willow toy isn’t fully explained, with rules laid out little by little, just enough for us to anticipate what Bear will do with them next. Their misadventure operates on familiar social mores, like navigating friend groups, living together with a partner, interacting at the workplace, etc., and it gets them all twisted due to the wish gone awry.

It’s a darkly funny movie that becomes truly malevolent the more you think about it. At the same time, if you choose not to read too much into it, it’s still a total blast. Either friend groups or couples seeking to test their tolerance for disturbing what-ifs in friendships and relationships could go see the film (perhaps even for a first date if you really want to put someone to the test!).

Curry Barker, like Kane Parsons with Backrooms, executes Obsession’s seemingly simple concept with a layered approach. Their first attempts at feature filmmaking are decent, and it’s safe to say that the kids are all right at conveying how they’re not alright!