Fear may be a universal emotion, but it typically plays out in ways that are uniquely personal. And those moviemakers who work in the genre of horror – the talented ones anyway – know how best to employ it, regardless of theme.
William Friedkin took the religious/demonic route with his 1973 film The Exorcist. So did James Wan with the first two The Conjuring films (2013 and 2016). Any number of directors, from George A. Romero to Danny Boyle, have contributed to the zombie craze, while Steven Spielberg made millions with his 1975 nature-strikes-back, shark-frenzy spectacle Jaws.
My wife, by contrast, gets her chills from watching bizarre serial-killer productions such as 1989’s Dead Calm or 2005’s Wolf Creek.
These are merely a few examples of movie fear-mongering, though. And as effective as these films might (or might not) be, for some of us the key to effective horror involves a trek into the dark abyss of the unknown.
Yeah, a ravenous shark can be scary. But Spielberg’s 1971 made-for-TV movie Duel is arguably even creepier. In it, Dennis Weaver plays a mild-mannered guy driving along the highway who finds himself threatened by a manic presence behind the wheel of a mysterious tractor-trailer.
What fuels the fear factor of Duel is that Spielberg never shows the face of the truck’s driver … or gives any hint of why the person – if, indeed, it is a person – is so intent on torturing Weaver’s hapless character.
Other filmmakers working more recently have followed suit. Think of the children running through the night in Zach Cregger’s Weapons. Or Curry Barker’s romantic-wish-gone-wrong study Obsession.
One of the most effective of this type of movie to hit screens of late is Backrooms, a film written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Kane Parsons. Adapted from his own multi-episode YouTube series of the same name, Backrooms immerses us in a world that – for much of its running time – features characters stuck in an eerily mysterious underground world.
The British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, a frustrated would-be architect who runs a cut-rate furniture business called Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire. We see Clark in therapy with Mary (played by the Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve) as he complains both about his business and about being thrown, by his wife, out of the house that, he emphasizes, “I paid for!”
And then we see Clark one day, frustrated by what seems to be his building’s power problems, accidentally discovering a passage through what appears to be a solid wall. On the other side is a world of yellow rooms, the backrooms of the film’s title, that Clark tentatively but gradually begins to explore.
Mary receives a disturbing answering-machine message from Clark, which causes her to go in search of him. She, too, discovers the backrooms, explores them – and ultimately finds out … well, not to give too much away, but it involves a company whose existence has been intimated through a number of scenes (some of which involve a functionary played by Mark Duplass).
Much of what works best in Backrooms is the blend of the film’s haunting musical score with a seemingly endless labyrinth of hallways and rooms, many of which are filled with extraneous pieces of furniture. And of course there are the sudden, frightening figures that pop out randomly from the dark.
Parsons, who was only 20 when making his film, is less successful when he tries to provide some context – not that the meaning behind the backrooms is ever fully explained. But Clark’s gradual derangement, the fates of his assistant (played by Lukita Maxwell), her boyfriend (played by Finn Bennett) and Mary are, ultimately, all tied more to an absurdist reality than they are to the kind of nameless chilling presence that is the stuff of true nightmares.
Just as his web series has multiple short episodes, it’s likely that Parsons’ feature will have a sequel. What’s unlikely is that it will be any more frightening than the ominous atmosphere he’s already given us.
"Movies 101” host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio.