Backrooms Movie Review

Written by Anthony “Ant” Johnson

Have you ever eaten a rice cake? Not because you wanted to. Not because it tasted good. But because it was there, and it was food, technically speaking, and you had to eat something. That’s Backrooms. It is, without question, a film. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has a cast, a score, and a runtime. What it does not have is a reason to care about any of those things. I walked out of the theater in exactly the same condition I walked in — and that, in my 50 years of watching films, is one of the worst verdicts I can deliver. Bad films make me angry. Great films move me. Backrooms made me nothing. Nothing is harder to write about than nothing.

The film is based on a 2022 television series, which I’ll be honest with you, I have not seen. I mention it not as a prerequisite but as context. We meet Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a middle-aged man adrift in his own life. He calls himself an architect. His surroundings suggest he manages a struggling furniture store that is quietly losing the fight to stay open. Then Clark stumbles — quite literally — into an alternate dimension, and decides to explore it.

Ejiofor is solid. He’s always solid. The man doesn’t have a bad performance in him, and he carries this film on his back with the quiet professionalism of someone who signed the contract and intended to honor it. The trouble is the script. Somewhere inside it there is a story — I’m fairly confident of that — but it never fully arrives on screen. The premise has potential. The execution mistakes mood for meaning. The film drifts through its own world without ever making me feel the weight of what Clark is experiencing or the stakes of why any of it matters.

There is no spoiler here because there is nothing to spoil. That is the film’s greatest problem and its most honest self-description.

Here is my verdict: Backrooms is not a theater film. It is a streaming film — and there is no shame in that, except that it isn’t quite committed enough to be a great streaming film either. It’s the kind of film you put on at home, let play in the background, and occasionally glance at when the sound catches your attention. If something happens that looks interesting, you plug in. If it doesn’t, you don’t miss much. That is my honest recommendation and I stand by it.

Ant’s Score: 6/10 | A.I. Ant’s Score: 6.48/10