Have you ever had a bad therapist? Or, at least, a therapist who is bad for you? If so, you might have a unique relationship with Backrooms. Kane Parsons’ feature-length rendition of a years-long storytelling project originated on YouTube after reading a 4Chan creepypasta post. The Backrooms screenplay was co-written with Will Soodik. The 20-year-old director is the youngest A24 has ever worked with, and it’s perhaps that inexperience that weakens the therapist-patient relationship at the core of the movie.
Mary (Renata Reinsve) doesn’t seem to know how to break through to her patient, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor). His wife left him some time ago, and he harbors both resentment for her and a loathing for himself. But from the first session we peer in on, it’s clear the doctor and patient have been circling the same emotional drain for a while. She’s frustrated with him, and he’s frustrated with himself. But he’s in therapy at all, which is probably a mark of some progress.
Whether Clark has clear therapy goals—or if he is achieving them—is less important to the issue of Backrooms’ depiction of therapy than is how much the movie peers into Mary’s own psyche. Therapy can take many valid forms. Every person responds differently to different methods, and different therapists are better equipped for or adept at different styles or relationship types.
Knowing too much about Mary creates a fundamental flaw in Backrooms’ metaphors.
But a therapist isn’t supposed to let you all the way into their side of the dynamic. Some therapists prefer to give their patients the appearance of a personal relationship. They’ll say you’re their favorite patient, tell you about their kids, or talk about what TV you’re both watching. Some patients prefer to know nothing about their psychologists. The less they know, the more the therapist can act like a mirror, or a window into personal insight.
Mary doesn’t let Clark or the viewer in directly, but Parsons does. He makes you a clear and comprehensive voyeur into exactly what makes her so detached and distant in her real life. Or, at least through Mary’s own flawed recollection of it. It’s a fundamental flaw in Backrooms’ metaphors about trauma and misconstrued memories.
Mary already crosses a therapeutic line when she berates Clark at his lowest point. It makes for decent dramatic tension, but it also weakens a lot of the character development that happened up until that point. When Clark’s battle with his own psyche becomes literal in the final act, it makes no sense at all for Clark’s inner demon to become Mary’s enemy, too. A therapist cannot fight your battles for you; making Mary physically fight Clark’s is moviemaking malpractice.
Backrooms’ third act falls apart when Mary’s own trauma is revealed.
Backrooms is keenly aware that Mary can’t possibly understand exactly what Mark has or is experiencing. It’s right there in the “drawing a dog if you’ve never seen a dog” metaphor that’s clumsily repeated throughout the movie. No depth of description or overly-rehearsed therapy role-play can put Mary in Clark’s head.
But Mary doesn’t seem at all like the right kind of therapist for Clark, or for the audience to experience him through. She has too many preconceptions about what he’s going through and what he needs from her to act like a mirror, and she gives away too much of her own trauma that she turns into a wide-open window.
As a result, Backrooms falls apart in the third act. Making Mary confront Clark’s horrors on his behalf is just not interesting, let alone good therapy. You can’t go into therapy expecting your psychologist to solve everything for you. It has to be a mutual process of trust with push and pull to find out where the line between mirror and window works best for you.
Backrooms is filled with fascinating ideas, but it misunderstands the therapy at the center of its narrative.
And if you can’t find that line, it’s not because you’re broken, unfixable, or wired wrong. Our brains aren’t circuit boards with unknowable switches, like popular culture might want to suggest. If a therapist can’t help you find the right balance to attune to the wavelengths of your needs, it just means you need to try a different therapist.
It’s a shame that Mary abandons Clark in his time of need. A good therapist would recognize when things aren’t working and help point you to another one instead of just going in circles or telling you it’s time to move on. It’s bad therapy, and it dulls the experience of reaching Backrooms’ climax.
And it’s perhaps an even worse shame that the cycles are poised only to continue by the film’s conclusion. Backrooms is filled with fascinating ideas and great technical moviemaking prowess, but its misunderstanding of therapy, good or bad, holds the narrative back from being good or memorable.
Backrooms is now playing in theaters everywhere.