Justin Chang

One night, in the basement of his store, he somehow walks through a wall and finds himself in the back rooms.

he wanders the space for hours and his mad curiosity stokes ours too who built this ugly labyrinth and why and what is the strange hulking creature he hears and sometimes sees clark returns to the back rooms day after day obsessively mapping out the different levels and marveling at the sometimes eccentric design choices and furnishings some of the chairs and shelves might have come from his store

At one point, he convinces his work assistant and her boyfriend to join him and film the place with a camcorder.

at which point the movie briefly becomes a spooky found-footage thriller in the style of that innovative 90s horror classic, The Blair Witch Project.

So, um, it's like, what, like an empty office building?

In here?

Sure.

But it's like it was made by a bunch of construction workers on acid.

There's even a pool.

Yeah.

Kind of.

Keep up.

Clark also talks about the back rooms to his therapist, Mary.

a wonderful Renata Reinsveig, who becomes an important secondary character.

At one point, we hear Mary articulate some of the movie's themes a little too bluntly.

We all have our loops, our habits, she says, behaviors that keep us walking in circles.

Clark's new playground, in other words, is a kind of prison, a metaphor for how we get stuck in traps of our own making.

but that's just one of many psychological readings that can be projected onto the backrooms.

For some viewers, they will evoke the thrill and the terror of extreme isolation.

For others, they'll remind them of the pandemic, when office buildings everywhere stood empty.