"Backrooms" - Part and Parsons

Divorced architect Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) can feel his life falling apart and slipping away, and is attending therapy with Dr Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) to find some way to resolve this. When he finds a strange portal to an impossible world in the cellar of his shop, he finds a solution...

(Veronica Superguide)
An audaciously surreal character piece, and a bold debut which does not outstay its welcome. A reflection on trauma, crumbling psyches, the impermanence of place which uses its 90s aesthetic nicely: both as a meta-take on our misremembered idea of that decade, and to make for an unsettling, uncanny time period to play around in. The performances are uniformly excellent: Ejiofor is forever on fine form, and Reinseve continues her hot streak. I was surprised that a first time director (even with cameos from common indie/small-budget winner and reliable legend Mark Duplass) managed to nab such esteemed talents for what was essentially marketed as a spooky internet meme made into a horror film, but the script is actually sterling stuff: well thought out, coming full circle with its setting and use of stone-tape theory to create themes of decaying mental states and how we approach rebuilding ourselves after trauma and misery, with excellent recurring imagery and parallels with architecture and furnishings. It's clever.
It's the sort of script the two can devour as actors (there is a dinner scene which fucking rules) and it's a credit to the filmakers that I was perfectly content following the life of Clark in the 90s as it fell apart and he tried to sell furniture with his two disinterested employees. When the scares came, they were built to well, and sequences with a Christmas tree and a pirate (as surreal as they are) were spooky highlights. I loved the deaths, and its atmosphere was well-constructed, spooky, engaging, involving and never outstayed its welcome. It's an assured debut and the sort of thing not only worth the hype, but which we need more of in the ecosystem.