Backrooms could have stayed as a short film

I went to see Backrooms everything must go last week as I wanted to see the film before it leaves the cinema, but I came out of that screening honestly really irritated so here are my thoughts.

I’ll start with the positives I thought the acting was great, there were some really good jump scares and I say that as a jump scare hater. The atmosphere was insanely creepy it was so well executed, the soundtrack, the cinematography couldn’t have been better. I think the fact that Kane Parsons directed this at 20 years old is incredibly impressive and far better than any short film I created at 20. I think he will go on to create amazing films but I don’t think this will be his best.

I was a little worried that given how long the film was I would find it boring after a while but luckily that problem never occurred. However I do have some problems with the film and maybe this is just me not understanding something but I found I spent the whole film waiting for something to happen. Yes there were some big scenes where they got attacked and chased by the lifeform or we obviously had the big moment between Clark and Mary when they were both in the backrooms but that didn’t feel like enough for me.

I left the film with feeling like some questions were answered but I also had new ones (maybe that’s because we’re getting a sequel, I don’t know) it just left me irritated. As soon as it we started to find out more about the backrooms and the people exploring it, the film just ended leaving us with nothing. So then I thought maybe that’s what the extra 15 minutes of footage is for, they’re going to tell us something but instead we got at least 10 minutes of wondering why there’s a sign stuck in the floor. Another problem I had is all the choices the characters made just felt really stupid, there didn’t seem to be much character or story development it was a whole lot of nothing.

Maybe I’ve missed something big or maybe I just personally didn’t get along with the film.

I’m going to watch the short film and come back here and see how it compares. Try and figure out if I think the feature length was necessary or whether it should have stayed a short film.

Post short film -

Well that was incredible! It’s so eerie and mysterious. I found that I have questions but in a short film I don’t need them answering I like the mystery, the wonder, how did he get there?

The editing was amazing, the found footage works so well it felt natural, it felt like you were in there with him (this I did feel with the feature length as well)

With it being a short on YouTube you do get the unfortunate problem of ads mid film which takes you out of it but it does a great job to pull you back in.

I loved the ending of him falling out of the sky from the backrooms, that is so brilliantly done although that camera would surely not survive that fall. This for now was far more interesting than the film and it’s only 9 minutes long. So I think it begs the question did it need to become a feature length film or should it have stayed as a short film?

With a feature length I want more of a story, this one felt like as soon as it was starting to go somewhere it ended and I didn’t feel wholly satisfied with it. I think what I’m trying to say is I want the story to be fully wrapped up at the end unless we know there’s going to be sequels since they’re typically the cause of a cliff-hanger.

Maybe I’m missing something with the feature or maybe it just wasn’t for me which is perfectly okay.

Since watching Backrooms I have read some other people’s reviews and articles to figure out what I’m missing and I realised I did in fact understand the point of the film whilst watching, it still just isn’t hitting the mark for me. From hearing what other people thought I definitely understand the characters better but I still don’t love it. I think as well because I didn’t know any of the lore going into it, I wanted to be able to love this as a stand-alone film without having to watch everything that came before it on YouTube.

I wouldn’t mind doing a second watch once it comes onto a streaming service to see what I think a second time round.

Kane Parsons is clearly a very talented man, and has an incredible future ahead of him if this is the start of his career I’m excited to see where it goes.

Laura x