Backrooms | Bouquets & Brickbats

18/07/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

‘See it on the biggest screen possible.’

Advice we’ve often given and something we had every intention of following ourselves in the case of Sir Christopher Nolan’s latest release. But, for the first time ever, finding an empty seat in an IMAX screening in Edinburgh proves impossible – unless we’re prepared to sit in the very front row. (Done that once, never again.) This development is simultaneously annoying and wonderfully heartening. Perhaps that much-rumoured resurgence in cinema attendance, fuelled by the likes of Obsession and Backrooms, is actually gathering momentum. Or is it just Nolan’s astute handling of the movie’s advertising, coupled with the Oscar success of Oppenheimer that has led to this stampede for tickets?

Whatever the reason, we decide to book in for a standard screening. We’ll revisit in IMAX sometime in the near future. Providing it’s any good, of course. Despite widespread critical acclaim, the online vitriol poured on the film by people who haven’t actually seen it yet means that this one has much to prove. And happily, it passes every test with flying colours.

We all know The Odyssey, of course. Homer’s epic poem is still the bane of many young students’ lives as they are obliged to read their way through its meandering stanzas, which focus on the twenty year ordeal of its central character, Odysseus (played here rather wonderfully by Matt Damon). Our hero, forced for the first decade to play a key role in the siege of Troy, then has to spend the next ten trying to find his way back to Ithaca, where his faithful wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and his loyal son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), still await his return.

But to get to them, Odysseus and his crew must take on all manner of obstacles: the giant cyclops, Polythemus (Bill Irwin); the powerful witch, Circe (Samantha Morton); the Lotus-dispensing Calypso (Charlize Theron); and, most egregious of all, the Ocean – which, because Odysseus has annoyed Poseidon, is determined to send them all to a watery grave.

With a running time just short of three hours, this could be a ponderous affair but Nolan (who also adapted the screenplay from the original poem) employs an ingenious non-sequential approach, cutting effortlessly back and forth across the passing years to ensure that no particular sequence overstays its welcome. What’s more, even though most of the situations are familiar from earlier versions of the story (the 1954 Ulysses starring Kirk Douglas springs to mind, as do several of the films featuring the work of stop-motion genius Ray Harryhausen), Nolan always manages to put a different spin on proceedings.

Of course, a tale as packed as this one is sure to have its more memorable sections. The scene where Odysseus and his men are locked in a cave with the aforementioned Polythemus is a particular standout, as is Circe’s transformation of Odysseus’s crew into swine. She uses a hands-on approach like a potter moulding clay, the sequence employing old-school practical effects that recall the work of the legendary Rick Baker.

And if you’re a fan of an enormous climactic dust-up, well, I don’t think you’ll be left feeling short-changed.

The cast is stellar with many big names popping up in minor roles. Robert Pattinson proves once again that he is a terrific actor as the oily, scheming Antinous and all hail to John Leguizamo as the ever-faithful Eumaeous. Much has been made of the casting of Elliot Page as Sinon and Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, with incensed commentators complaining about ‘authenticity’ as though this is a historical piece rather than a slice of weird fantasy, but both actors give strong performances that more than justify their casting. Oh, and by the way, those American accents serve as a commentary on the current world order, which – when you think about it – makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps the most original addition here is the clarification of just how much two decades of havoc have taken their toll on the central character. In the film’s final section, as Odysseus recalls the cruelty and bloodshed visited upon the people of Troy, this feels increasingly like the recollections of a man suffering from PTSD, finally emerging from a lotus-induced fog and forced to confront the pain his decisions have inflicted on those who followed him.

Make no mistake, this is a superb film: assured, inventive and directed by a man at the very top of his game. I haven’t always loved Nolan’s films but this may just be his masterpiece. Buckle in and get those IMAX seats booked… if you can find them.

5 stars

Philip Caveney

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