REVIEW:
Some movies need an explanation. In a world where directors like to leave things up to the audience to figure out, and to have their own interpretation, sometimes a little bit of guidance goes a long way. And this is one of those movies that could have used a little bit more to help us understand it. Here’s the thing… the concept is cool. The first half of the movie is pretty solid. Even some of the things that happen in the second half, when everything starts coming out, are pretty cool. But there are just so many questions that go unanswered.
Let’s start with this… the movie is about a man who is down on his luck. He owns a giant furniture store that nobody ever visits. He has two employees that work for him, but we don’t actually see them do anything more than make a video for him once. A commercial for the store. Other than that, we don’t see them at the store. So are they salespeople or just a freelance video crew? Despite a line that is dropped later on, where our protagonist says that the woman was his sales manager, or something to that effect, let’s assume they are just a freelance video crew, and a couple.
Well, other than them, it’s just him. Clark. Played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. He meets with a therapist from time to time and does role reversal and acting out about the time his wife left him. Other than that, it’s just him in the store by himself, not just during the day, but at night too. He sleeps there, in one of the show beds. And there’s something mysterious going on. The store is using a ton of electricity. Clark has an electrician come down to the basement to look at the breaker. They get no answers, but what they do find are a couple of mysterious switches in the breaker that don’t seem to go to anything.
All of this mystery is great. The setup here is terrific. And then one night, Clark wanders into the basement and finds that he can walk through a wall. That’s the main catalyst here. There is a wall that you can just step through in enter into a whole bunch of other empty rooms. For the most part, these rooms don’t have much going on. A bunch of furniture piled together. A stop sign standing up, turned backwards. Not much else. This is basically the first half of the movie.
Except for one cool thing. At one point, Clark decides to document whatever he found and gets that video team couple to come with him. They wander through the store with him and start filming things, and let’s just say we get some of the scariest moments in the movie. The scariest things are what you don’t know. What you can’t see. And these scenes of the video crew couple in the store, with the guy wandering down slanted hallways with a rope tied around his waste, have some of that.
The second half, if you will, is about Clark’s therapist, Mary, going to the store to look for him. Now, forget the obvious questions like wouldn’t she just call the police and report him missing, and would she really go wandering into this giant empty store all by herself. Let’s suspend belief there, for the purpose of having a cool movie. IF she doesn’t go into the store, we don’t have a movie. So she goes wandering in, and what she finds is basically where all the answers (or clues, since there really are no answers,) start to come out. So… SPOILERS AHEAD.
She basically enters into Clark’s mind. Something like that. This is where the questions come up. Is the world of the backrooms Clark’s mind? If so, how does Mary get in there? Is it real? It seems so, in the sense that it’s not like Mary is somewhere else, lying down dreaming about this, Matrix-style. So she does go in there, as evidenced by the scientist team that pulls her out towards the end of the movie. But how did Clark create a space in his mind and turn it into a real space that people can walk through?
Let’s say for a moment, that this is not a space in his mind. That it is actually another world. Believe it or not, that makes more sense (at least, in terms of fantasy and actually having rules.) If this is another world than it explains the scientist running around, trying to figure it all out in the beginning of the movie, but it doesn’t explain all of the weird things and characters that are in there. Like a woman who is clearly supposed to be a representation of Clark’s wife.
Why don’t we say that it’s a little of both. It is another world, that you can enter into by walking through the walls, but it is also a world that Clark created with things inside of his mind His subconscious. This is deep stuff, on the same weird level as that Jennifer Lopez-Vincent D’OnFrio movie, the Cell. It’s all kind of cool, but it just needed more of an explanation. Remember when Hitchcock’s Psycho ended with the psychologist explaining to the police officers what was going on in Norman Bates’ mind, and what it all meant? We could have used something like that here. And when we do get a meeting between Mary and a scientist at the very end, it seems like we will get some of those answers. Only we don’t. This was definitely an interesting and creative movie, but it could have used more answers and explanations to really help it make sense.