‘Backrooms’ isn't about making sense

   Backrooms, an addition to the growing list of self-consciously inventive horror movies, arrives with a pedigree that may impress aficionados. Produced by horror masters James Wan and Osgood Perkins, the movie also features performances by actors with hefty resumes: Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve. 

  A bit about the movie's background: It springs from a movement called "creepypasta,'' i.e., horror stories posted and shared on the internet. Director Kane Parsons, now 20, began uploading Backrooms episodes in 2022, expanding  a previous "creepypasta" concept into 22 short films.

   I learned this from Googling and had no exposure to Backrooms before I saw Parsons' movie. I say this because Parsons' movie may have more appeal to those familiar with his online work than I am.

  On one hand, Backrooms can be seen as a creative immersion in a liminal world composed of endless rooms. Liminal worlds, by the way, are currently big in horror, bland, sometimes transitional locations that resonate with eerie emptiness.

   Set during the 1990s, Backrooms slips easily into its  off-kilter tale, partly because of the aural atmosphere the film creates, a mixture of unintelligible voices and synth music by Edo Van Breemen and Parsons.

    The movie has a story of sorts, which Parsons shows us is being watched by ill-defined researchers,  a conceit that adds more cause for apprehension. 

   Ejiofor plays Clark, a furniture store owner whose life is headed in the wrong direction. His wife recently left him, and Clark has been unable to launch his desired career as an architect.

    To get on the right track, Clark visits Mary (Reinsve), a therapist he hopes will open new doors for him. She's written a book conveniently titled The Window Within. 

    Displaced from his home, Clark has been relegated to sleeping in his store. He also appears as a peg-legged pirate in awful commercials made by one of his employees (Finn Bennett). We never see any customers in Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire, one more ploy that augments the sense of vacancy that permeates Backrooms -- absence that's meant to be felt.

    When Clark discovers a portal in the store's basement, he enters a weird alternate reality. Upon returning to "normal," he shares his discovery  with his therapist, who probably thinks he's delusional.

     To convince a skeptical Mary that his experience was "real," Clark convinces Bennett's Bobby and another employee (Lukita Maxwell) to pass through the portal with him. Clark wants Bobby to film their trippy experience so that he can prove the existence of the rooms that both frighten and attract him.

      It doesn't take long for Mary to visit the store, find the portal, and enter the weird dimension in which Clark has lost himself.

     Working from a screenplay by Will Soodik, Parsons includes flashbacks to Mary's childhood with a paranoid mother. Her childhood home was demolished by developers leaving only a shard, a handprint she saved from the rubble of a concrete driveway. It will come in handy.

    Parsons offers a variety of surreal sights: piles of discarded furniture, a stop sign with the word "stop" spelled backwards, and glimpses of figures who make us suspect that the place is occupied and dangerous.

     Parsons excels at alternate-reality building: rooms full of wall-to-wall carpeting and yellow walls, and, eventually, figures with distorted features. Are we seeing funhouse reflections of the reality of Clark and Mary's lives? Maybe.

      Not surprisingly, we're primed for the big reveal that will make sense of everything we've been watching. The movie, which functions as an inventive tease, has little interest in tidying up after itself, offering only the notion that we trap ourselves in behaviors we keep repeating, no matter how many times they lead us nowhere.

       Neither Ejiofor nor Reinsve has much to develop. Mostly, they react to the movie's increasingly alienating atmospherics. Mark Duplass turns up in a role that seems as if it's going to provide the explanation we've been waiting for, but his character doesn't seem to know much about what's happening,  either. 

        Blood and gore are in short supply, and some of the movie's twisted jokes, expressionless human figures whose insides can be scooped out and eaten, feel as if they've popped out of nowhere.

      There's talent on display in Backrooms, notably Danny Vermette's creative production design, but the found-footage quality and art-horror atmospherics only take the movie so far. Ambiguity  isn't a fatal flaw, but Backrooms begins to feel repetitive as it crawls inside our heads.

      Backrooms works like a maze. Homes and offices are creepy. Lives are empty. Something's always missing. Some will find all this intriguing. Others may just want out. 

     My reaction was mixed. I appreciated Parsons' willingness to experiment and was disappointed that the characters often play second fiddle to so many half-baked ideas that suggest more than the film is  able (or perhaps willing) to realize.

Joachim Trier's complex family drama

 On the surface, Norwegian director Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value seems poised to tell a conventional family story. That might have happened had Trier not placed his characters against a backdrop that includes theater, film, and acting, a choice that deepens questions his film raises about the complicated nature of father/daughter relationships.

   Stellan Skarsgard brings a weary yet calculating quality to the role of Gustav Borg, a filmmaker trying to make one last great movie, a swan song he hopes will confirm his fading stature and solidify his legacy. He's the father of two daughters with whom he has become estranged.

   As Gustav's daughter, Nora, Renate Reinsve, who starred in Trier's The Worst Person in the World, plays an actress who could make Gustav's film soar. Unfortunately for him, she harbors too many resentments (many justifiable) to accept an offer to play the movie's lead.

   In the movie's third key performance, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas plays Nora's sister Agnes. Less embittered, Agnes has more tolerance for a father who basically abandoned his family and has only now returned to attend the funeral of his former wife.

   Gustav's reappearance may not be motivated by grief or sentiment. Due to a legal technicality, he owns the home in which his late wife raised his daughters. It's also where he plans to shoot his film.

   Temperamental and deeply neurotic, Nora is introduced in an alarming way. She's playing the main character in a reimagined version of a Chekhov play but finds excuse after excuse not to go on stage when cued. 

   Perhaps in an attempt to manipulate his reluctant daughter, Gustav casts Elle Fanning's Rachel Kemp, an American actress  to star in his film. She's bankable, but we get the feeling Gustav knows her casting is a mistake. 

  Reticent to the point of cruelty, Gustav offers little support as Kemp struggles to find her way into the role. Numerous rehearsal scenes highlight Kemp's inability to connect to the role she's been offered; but Fanning makes it clear that the talented, committed actress baldy needs guidance that Gustav refuses to supply. 

   And on another level, Gustav knows he's asking too much of Kemp. An alcoholic, he's capable of spewing drink-fueled sarcasm, but he's not mean enough to humiliate an actress who's trying.

   Gustav's film -- his first in 15 years -- isn't his first attempt to direct one of his daughters. He directed Lilleaas as a child in the movie that made him famous. She expressed no further interest in acting. He focused on her during the filming, but then deserted the family.

    To further complicate matters, Agnes is married with a child that Gustav relates to with affection he seldom showed his daughters. 

    Tender scenes between the sisters enrich the emotional environment, and Trier adds a historical dimension to the proceedings. Gustav grew in the home he now owns and where his mother was snatched by the Nazis, who tortured her during the War.  Gustav wants to tell his mother's story, although he insists that his film is not autobiographical. 

   It's clear from the outset that Gustav wants to reconcile with Nora. Perhaps the only way he knows how to do that is to direct her while letting her talent blossom, to give her a splendid showcase. Still, his attempt also reflects the self-absorption of an artist who's thinking about what's best for his movie.

    Sentimental Value has its comic moments but Trier, working from a screenplay he co-wrote with Eskil Vogt, has made a rewarding dramatic work, one that allows gifted actors to create characters of uncommon complexity.

A muddled debut and a school conflict

   Lineage doesn't necessarily matter when it comes to filmmaking, but it's difficult to begin a review of Armand, a stylistically muddled Norwegian thriller from director Halfdan Ullmann Tondel, without mentioning Ullmann Tondel's grandparents, director Ingmar Bergman and actress Liv Ullmann. 

   Safe to say Tondel doesn't seem intimidated by his family's achievements. Mixing straightforward storytelling with surreal touches, Tondel latches onto a subject that's rich with possibility, a clash between parents at a grade school where six-year-old Armand (never seen) has been accused by Jon, another unseen student, of bullying and sexual abuse. 

   Wisely, Tondel focuses on parents not children. The school's publicity-shy principal (Oystein Roger) insists that Armand's mother (Renate Reinsve) meet with Jon's parents (Ellen Dorrit Petersen and Endre Hellestveit). Reasonable adult behavior is supposed to follow. Sure.

   Sounds intriguing, but the movie plays as if Tondel hadn't sorted through the screenplay's thickening web of issues and subtext; he veers away from the story's psychological and social dynamics to  perplexing effect, even including a couple of dance numbers.

    It may not ignite, but Tondel has the necessary kindling to stoke plenty of dramatic fire. 

   An actress by trade, Elizabeth has had a prior relationship with Jon's parents. Turns out Jon's mother was the sister of Elizabeth's late husband, who -- we're told  -- committed suicide.

   Perhaps to add satirical garnish, Tondel also deals with the school's timidity. The principal puts a novice teacher (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen) in charge of the pivotal meeting between parents. She's supposed to smooth things over.

   Eventually, the principal and another administrator (Vera Veljovic-Jovanovic) join the conference, which gets nowhere and is disrupted by the administrator's frequent nosebleeds, a bizarre intrusion that, like much else about the movie, leaves you wondering what Tondel had in mind. 

   It's difficult to fault Tondel for being too cautious; he includes a surprising scene in which Elizabeth goes on an uncontrolled and extended laughing jag. Perhaps she's nervous or maybe she glimpses an inherent absurdity in the idea of a six-year-old boy being capable of sexual abuse. 

   Whatever's happening, Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World and A Different Man) bravely goes along for the ride.

   I lost hope when, late in the picture, Elizabeth and the school's custodian begin to dance. The best I can say about Tondel's effort is that it's interesting watching him try to hit all manner of notes. The resultant head-scratcher of a movie makes you hope Tondel eventually hits his stride.

   

He's 'A Different Man' for sure

 

  Lately, movies seem preoccupied with the fluidity of identity, particularly when it's based on gender or appearance. A Different Man enters the “transformation” fray with a story that, like The Substance, links physical metamorphosis to larger themes.

  A heavily made-up Sebastian Stan plays Edward, a man with neurofibromatosis, a disfiguring condition that turns him into a contemporary Elephant Man. Writer/director Aaron Schimberg’s screenplay presents Edward with a miracle cure to remove the tumors that bubble across his face. He’ll be ordinary, one more anonymous face in New York's teeming crowd.

   Stan ably defines the pre-treatment Edward as a lonely, awkward, and reclusive fellow who lives in a dilapidated Brooklyn apartment with an ugly, threatening leak in the ceiling of its living room. Edward, who wants to act, appears in public service videos that offer instruction about how to treat those whose looks can be startling, perhaps even frightening.

     When Ingrid (Renate Reinsve of The Worst Person in the World) moves into the apartment next to Edward's, he's offered a connection to the outside world. Vivacious, friendly, and sporting short shorts, Ingrid treats Edward without prejudice, although she may have ulterior motives. She's an aspiring playwright looking for a subject.

     Schimberg takes full advantage of Edward’s facial alterations; after being treated with experimental drugs, Edward experiences nausea and pain. Bit by bit, he begins to peel diseased layers off his face, a sight that’s not for the squeamish.

      It takes time, but the movie eventually leans into Pirandellan territory, tackling questions of illusion and reality and examining Edward's growing disconnection from his former self.

      Schimberg accomplishes all this by introducing a play that Ingrid has written. She’s directing a production of her drama in a small theater way off Broadway, basing her story on Edward’s meager existence.

      Edward, who changed his name and vanished from Ingrid’s life after his transformation, stumbles upon the theater and auditions for a part he was  “born to play'' -- himself.

      He lands the role, but another challenge arises. 

      Enter Oswald (Adam Pearson). Pearson, a British actor who really has neurofibromatosis, brings  charisma to the role of Oswald, who charms everyone he meets. Oswald may represent what Edward could have been had he not allowed his disfigured face to turn him inward.

       Oswald impresses Ingrid, and begins to take over the role Edward was “born to play." Pushed to the sidelines,  Edward becomes unhinged in ways that can be darkly amusing but don’t always compute during the movie’s somewhat disjointed third act.

        Cinematographer Wyatt Garfield perfectly captures New York fringe living: bad apartments, shot-and-a-beer bars, and the subway rides in which everyone strains not to look at anyone else. Schimberg also seems familiar with the aspiring “creatives” who occupy this world. In that sense, A Different Man can be viewed as a movie that only could have been made in New York.

      Schimberg can’t entirely manage all the themes and twists he introduces. Still, A Different Man hits too many strong notes to ignore. It contains one great cameo, and its vividly drawn characters etch their way into memory.

A young woman's shape-shifting life

    An entertaining and perceptive look at an unsettled young woman, The Worst Person in the World owes much of its success to Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve. In a performance that's vibrant and smart,  Reinsve portrays Julie, an engaging shape-shifter of a woman who turns 30 about midway through the movie.

   Like many people her age, Julie isn't sure what she wants to do with her life. She begins the movie as a medical student, transfers to psychology, and later decides that she has heard yet another professional call. She'll be a photographer. 

    She winds up taking pictures but also works in a book store.

   As the movie, develops — in 12 chapters directed by Joachim Trier from a script he co-wrote with Eskil Vogt — Julie tries on different poses, attitudes, and men.

     At times, Trier employs a narrator to tell Julie's story. His musical  choices accompany a variety of Julie's shifting moods -- from jazz to funky dance music to Art Garfunkel.

     Although Julie is working out her feelings about lots of things, she's never less than an independent woman, a fully realized character even in her uncertainty.  Men become a focal point in Julie's journey but she remains at the center of her story.

    The Worst Person in the World finds Julie in two major relationships, the principal one being with Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), an author of graphic novels. 

    A decade older than Julie, Askel cautions at the outset that the relationship won't work. He's ready to settle down. She isn't. 

    It’s instructive that Julie cites Aksel’s doom-struck declaration as the reason she falls in love with him. She’s obviously not loading the romantic deck in her favor. She's not looking for smooth sailing.

    The movie deals with issues ranging from infidelity, absentee fathers, the environment, and insecurities about the possibility of   becoming a parent. Julie’s father (Vidar Sandem) has remarried and wants little to do with his grown daughter.

    But Trier isn't drawing straight lines between Julie's past and her current confusions. He's not interested in simplifying.

    Eivend (Herbert Nordrum), a barista who reveals himself as a decent sort, becomes Julie’s second major relationship. He, too, seems prepared for more than Julie is willing to give. 

    There's overlap here because Julie's relationship with Eivend begins before she breaks up with Aksel.

    In the wrong hands, The Worst Person in the World  easily could have been weightless. But Trier deepens the story, giving it a sad twist toward the end.  

    If expanded thematically, The Worst Person in the World suggests how difficult it is for Julie and some of her contemporaries to envision a future. They're not ready to follow a standard map: the grind of work, an arduous marriage, and irksome children. But they have no alternative plan, either.

    They're wary of closing any doors, an inevitable consequence of choosing a path or even stumbling onto one. 

   Unlike many movies with a bit of rom-com plasma in their bloodstreams, the characters in Trier's movie seem like real people living real lives during moments of transition. They don't always do the right thing. Sometimes they try. Sometimes they don't. 

   Perhaps that explains the movie's exaggerated title: Julie's living through a moment when she feels that she may not be doing anything right or accomplishing anything significant -- or anything all.

   Does Julie reach a moment of great realization? 

   Maybe, but whether she does or not, Trier paints a smart, amusing portrait of a woman who has yet to determine who she really wants to be. You get the feeling that she's definitely not alone.