Month: June 2026

Backrooms

02/06/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Contemporary horror films by Gen Z filmmakers seem to be soaring to ever-new heights. Just last week, twenty-six-year-old Curry Barker’s Obsession proved a breakout hit on a budget that was just short of a million dollars, meaning that it was able to move into profit on its release day. More interestingly, the film bucked the usual trend by taking even more on its second week, buoyed by good word of mouth.

Now twenty-year-old Kane Parsons’ Backrooms (developed from one of the ‘creepy pasta’ shorts he’s been posting on YouTube since his teens) scores an even bigger opening. It does boast a budget of ten million (though this is peanuts compared to the excesses of most contemporary Hollywood blockbusters) but once again, premier production company A24 have spotted a filmmaker’s potential and granted them the opportunity to fulfil it. While Obsession has its roots in classic horror story, The Monkey’s Paw, Backrooms‘ closest cousin could arguably be Alice in Wonderland – if that book were transposed to the early 1990s and had moments of absolute terror.

Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is the manager of Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire, a down-at-heel furniture store, which despite Clark’s ramshackle attempts at a promotional video, appears to be struggling to entice any customers over the threshold. After a messy break up with his wife, Clark is actually sleeping in the store. He occasionally drives off for a session with his therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), who is trying to explore Clark’s anger issues – but she has some psychological baggage of her own, which she’s been lugging around since childhood.

Meanwhile, Clark is having major problems with the store’s electricity supply and, when investigating some strange noises in the basement, he discovers a portal that takes him to the backrooms of the title, a series of interconnecting sickly-yellow enclosures seemingly designed by Escher and heaped here and there with piles of furniture that defy all logic.

When Clark subsequently tells Mary about his new discovery, she’s understandably worried about his state of mind…

Backrooms is an incredibly immersive and occasionally heart-stopping film, that somehow manages to conjure moments of absolute dread from the smallest things: a muffled noise; a briefly glimpsed figure; a narrow opening a character is required to squeeze through. It’s all I can do not to shout warnings to the luckless fools who wander in there, despite knowing only too well that if I found a wall I could walk through, I’d most surely want to do it, again and again.

Co-written by Parsons with Will Soodik, the film boasts an incisive script which is open to interpretation, but nonetheless utterly affecting. The Jungian ‘Dream House’ metaphor is made frighteningly real, as the terrors herein bubble up from the central characters’ own psyches – and are all the more disturbing because of that. As the film careers confidently onwards, it carries me helplessly along with it.

A final revelation confirms a devastating truth: that we are all prisoners of whatever bad things happened to us back down the line. Parsons would appear to have a promising (and lucrative) film career ahead of him and on the strength of Backrooms, I’ll be first in the queue to see whatever he comes up with next. There’s already talk of a ‘Backrooms 2‘ but I for one hope it’ll be something entirely different.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

Power Ballad

31/05/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Since his 2006 breakthrough, Once, Irish director John Carney has concentrated his attention on films about musicians – and, as you’ll no doubt have guessed from its title, Power Ballad is no exception. I’m pretty sure this is his first attempt to deal with the subject of intellectual copyright though. And if that sounds dull, don’t be misled. For my money, this sparky, enjoyable drama might be Carney’s best offering yet.

Rick Power (Paul Rudd) is a former member of an influential band. Back down the years, he swapped his dreams of stardom for marriage and fatherhood. He’s living happily with Rachel (Marcella Plunkett) and their teenage daughter, Aja (Beth Fallon), in the suburbs of Dublin. To earn a crust, Rick fronts a band called Bride and Groove, who specialise in playing weddings, covering all the usual hits. Occasionally (and much to the chagrin of his fellow band members), he throws in one of his own compositions, with predictably dancefloor-clearing results.

When the band picks up a gig at a swanky hotel, one of the wedding guests turns out to be Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a former member of a chart-busting boy band, now trying to find his way as a solo artist. Danny joins the band on stage for a Stevie Wonder song and Rick and Danny appear to have an easy rapport. After the gig, they hang out together, drinking whiskey, smoking spliffs and exchanging ideas. 

Rick plays Danny one of his old compositions, How To Write a Song Without You, which Danny seems to take an instant shine to.

Six months later, Rick is walking through a shopping mall when he hears a very familiar melody playing on the tannoy. It turns out that Danny has recorded Rick’s song as his new single and it’s on track to be a massive number one hit… but there’s no mention of Rick’s involvement.

Anyone who has played in a band will identify with Rick’s resulting anguish. His song has been appropriated but he has no proof that it’s his original composition. When he tells people about it, a lot of them (even his friends) think he’s fantasising. His inability to obtain the recognition he deserves sends him into a spiral of frustration that threatens to destroy everything he has – including his relationship with his daughter.

Rudd is always an appealing performer and he’s terrific in the lead role, performing his own vocals and looking every inch a musician, while Jonas (a genuine former boy band member) does a great job of portraying Danny’s conflicted emotions, his inability to own up to what he has done. Keith McErlean is impressive as Kyle, Danny’s ruthless American manager, and I also love Peter McDonald’s performance as Sandy, Rick’s supportive best friend, ready to back his mate up no matter what happens – even if it means hopping on a flight to Los Angeles to take the bull by the horns.

Power Ballad is perfectly pitched and manages to keep its conclusion tantalisingly unresolved until almost the final shot. If you don’t come out of this with an earworm for that central song, then there’s frankly no hope for you.

4.7 stars

Philip Caveney