Right off the bat, “The Backrooms” was entertaining. I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t get boring sometimes — but really, even the dullest of conversations happened in settings brought to life by countless artists’ designs and practical effects (all 30,000 square feet of them). The attention to detail that takes a mildewed, nondescript office building into a labyrinthic nightmare is its own sort of entertainment. However, “The Backrooms” would have greatly benefited from the implementation of a purely emotional sub-story. Without it, the conclusion did not wrap up quickly or cleanly, or deliver the meaning all at once. Instead, it was mostly left to interpretation. So, here’s how I would have liked to see the ending go.
Within a single film, three storylines are unfolding simultaneously. Apart but intertwined, think of these storylines like strands of yarn — they provide themselves, one another and the braid itself significantly more structure. One string is composed of physical stake and value — the imminent tangible danger or benefit imposing itself on the protagonist or his/her world. The second string is made of emotion — the frequencies of feelings between characters and concepts. (Death overlaps as both a physical and emotional stake). The third and final string is perhaps the most important of the three to handle correctly, a philosophical storyline (identity vs. self, individual vs. community and community vs. individual, to state a few).
At the end of the movie, during the climactic two minutes, these storylines combine, helping to tie the many aspects of the script together. Indeed it is a conclusion that leaves… no loose ends.
“The Backrooms” follows Clark, a furniture salesman at “Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire”. That’s not exactly a lofty title, and as a failed architect who’s slowly drowning in the drink, he is aware. His fatal flaw becomes apparent during sessions with his therapist Mary as his inability to accept culpability or blame. Along with his habit of shifting blame, he has gotten used to letting his rage and resentment out at others instead of himself.
In a late-night drunken stupor, Clark wanders down to the basement of his store, and by chance notices a hairline rift in reality. He steps through the wall right into the Backrooms, an indefinite construct inhabited by its own increasingly distorted recollections of real-world places and people. Clark spirals into obsession the longer he stays there. Mary eventually tracks him down, discovering for herself the existence of the Backrooms. She then finds just how far Clark has deteriorated since their last session when he ambushes her.
From here on out the plot begins to suffer from the lack of an emotional story — not in huge structural gaps, but in little holes everywhere. A bound Mary faces off with a very crazy Clark. A long conversation ensues, which at times feels as though it simply drones on. It was perfect conditions for tension and emotion, but the suspense is largely absent since we just don’t care all that much about Mary or her connection to Clark. Eventually Clark is interrupted by the entrance of himself — but not — into the room with him and Mary. The creature is a manifest memory of Clark, but distorted (more so than a typical Backrooms entity — this is perhaps a nod to Clark’s drinking habit.) It is also wearing the construct’s faulty recollection of Clark’s pirate getup. When Clark expresses to the creature that they both don’t need to change, he accepts his worst nature, thereby strengthening it, and is promptly eaten. Then, the creature turns on Mary.
At this point in the movie, two of the substories have done their job splendidly. The climax has definitively conveyed the moral meaning of the movie: it was a story about a dying man who had been dying all his life, and how to not end up like him. Mary handles physical stakes, finding herself in danger of being killed around almost every corner. Clark handles philosophical stakes in that his decaying morals and inability to accept blame are his undoing… But a staring truth remains: other than passing nostalgia, mild anxiety or piqued interest, I didn’t resonate with the plot all that much. Or at all.
It’s clear that an emotional storyline wasn’t ever soundly considered, and this is one of those cases where a missing substory separated a good movie from a truly great one. Directors and writers forget that we love to feel stories, not just… take them in. It wasn’t as special as it could have been, but was so close to being just that — and that is, arguably more so than a straight-up failure, an especially spectacular loss.
So, here I diverge from the usual path of script-surgery: no, I wouldn’t totally rearrange the events of the story itself (although shortening a few scenes here and there couldn’t hurt.) Mostly, I would focus on sewing another layer into this script — an emotional story, a charged, relevant one. That would automatically make it easier to become involved and invested in the twists and turns of the scenes. As for how an emotional story could have been implemented, it’s actually very simple: establishing relationships of any type throughout the film for us to feel and hold onto would have done the trick. For Mary to have a life outside of Clark and the Backrooms, for Clark to have a life outside himself — it would have made her narrow escape, and his slow destruction, that much more meaningful.
