Backrooms (2026)

Director: Kane Parsons

Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Haven’t seen the youtube series, either. But I’m bound by blog magic to acquiesce to any special requests made*.

Did I Like It: And I was willing to say that a large part of my distraction during the film is that I was not in on the whole mythology, wondering if this was how most people felt when they watched a Star Trek film.

But I’m not sure there even is any sort of deeper mythology here. The internet would be tripping over itself to tell me how the story of the film ties in with the web series, which in turn would tie in to the originaly memeification of the original 4chan posts.

Wait a minute. I watched a horror movie based on a meme? I watched a horror movie originally, sort of, even arguably based on 4chan posts?

All right.

The titular backrooms are set up to be a slow pitch down the middle for a novice horror movie cinematographer. Move the camera slightly in almost any direction and something can leap out of the shadows. That’s fine. I don’t have a problem with jump scares. They work, and work more reliably than almost any other scare tactic in the movies. Over-using them can be a problem, but piling them one on top of another like a warehouse of BOO! renders a film as just one long repeat of the last few minutes of The Blair Witch Project (1999). Even that’s not the worst approachfor a horror movie—the last few minutes of Blair Witch are the only ones that really approach working—but eventually I stop asking “What the hell was that?” and say “Oh. It’s a pirate. He wants to sell me a bedroom set, or bite me in the shoulder. Got it.”

*Feels like maybe I shouldn’t have revealed that.

Doctor Strange (2016)

Director: Scott Derrickson

Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch*, Chiwetel Ejiofor**, Rachel McAdams, Mads Mikkelsen

Have I Seen it Before: Yes, but oddly enough I did not make it in the first weeks of its theatrical release. Between this and Ant-Man (2015), I’m not entirely sure why I wasn’t in much of a hurry on some of these latter phase 2/early phase 3 MCU movies.

Did I Like It: Yes, but I wonder if the movie is holding back.

I suppose I have something of a conception of why this film didn’t initially rise to the top of my agenda, and that’s because I had next to no knowledge of the character up until the MCU tried to bring it into the mainstream***.

And from what I’ve seen of the movie, it is that jamming into the mainstream that weakens the whole endeavor. People love Strange because his exploits are like an acid trip in 64 colors. Here, the film is loopy at times, but not “last ten minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and more just loopy enough to make sure the film can have a strong opening weekend. Amid the cascading dimensions, there’s an unrequited love story and a pretty basic superhero origin tale at the core. It’s fine, but it’s not terribly revelatory.

So the movie succeeds, as it’s objectively an enjoyable time spent at the movies, and doubly succeeds because it makes me want to steep myself in the greater mythology of the Sorcerer Supreme. I want to be a fan of Strange, I just wish Marvel hadn’t held back.

And maybe they won’t from here on in. 

*Joking about his name has become pretty passé by the time I write this, but I’m as certain as I can be without actually checking the footage that his one of the alternate names for Gerry Dorsey, and I’m reasonably sure that we hadn’t heard of the actor before that time. What is he hiding?

**Why my spellcheck was bent out of shape about “Chiwetel” and not “Ejiofor” is beyond me. Why it’s only bent out of shape the second time I typed the last name, I’ll never know.

***Which would be a big part of the reason that the casting of Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One. It is whitewashing, sure, and that’s not great, but it also frees a character from the constrains of gender, which is better than not good. Interesting at least that the film could both fail and succeed to embrace diversity. And it certainly isn’t the most whitewashed film to star Cumberbatch.