Pick of the week
Backrooms
Director Kane Parsons was just 20 when he shot this genre-redefining horror, based on the “creepypasta” YouTube series he’d been developing since his mid-teens. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Clark, a failed architect who discovers an apparently endless liminal space behind the strip mall store where he works and, depressingly, also lives. Renate Reinsve is Clark’s therapist, Mary, a woman working through her own traumas around enclosed spaces, who nonetheless follows him into these backrooms to attempt a rescue. The wallpaper may be monotonously yellow, but there are scares of every shade here and, underlying it all, the heart-pounding thrill of pure originality. EEJ
Monday 26 October, HBO Max
