Ahead of A24’s Backrooms release, director Kane Parsons has been discussing not only the influences behind this film, but also his early career, which includes his web series and the hugely popular The Backrooms (found footage). And as it turns out, a certain Valve game has played a very influential role in his creative works.
“Portal would be the earliest influence,” Parsons says in an interview with Letterboxd. “It’s the easiest one for me to pin down as like the strongest influence over everything I’ve done in my entire life probably.
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“The general set construction of the Portal games is something that’s been in my brain for so long, I frequently have dreams where I’m just in the Aperture [Science Enrichment] Center. It’s not yellow, it’s very gray, and blue, and kind of bleak. And by the second game it’s rotting and it’s totally falling apart. But it’s vast in a lot of ways, it feels like an eternal indoors that goes on in all directions, that is just absurd in its scope. So I think it’s actually very similar to the Backrooms on that front.”
Out of the two games in the Portal series, the second stands out as “the bigger inspiration”. Not only does the sequel refine its identity but Parsons picks out its “inherently comedic and absurd” premise as a major reason as to why it had such a huge impact on his work.
“There was one specific thread that really stuck with me when I was younger which was throughout the first game, and more so in the second game when they’ve solidified their art direction,” Parsons explains. “You can see these murals on the wall; you can clearly see traces of another human being in this place. And there’s some specific moments in the [Backrooms] film with these murals.”
Just as in Portal, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s character Clark is not the first person to venture into the backrooms, as some teaser clips have shown signs of others trudging through the space beforehand. The film also takes place in the established narrative of Parsons’ found footage mini-film, which has another character fall between the gaps of our reality into the backrooms.
But the comparisons between this Backrooms adaptation and Portal don’t just end in its location. There’s also The Async Research Institute, which shares many similarities with the legendary Aperture Science Inc.
In the same way that Aperture is an unregulated corp, which prioritises research at the expense of human collateral, Async is responsible for mapping the backrooms and creating a ‘stable’ doorway known as the Threshold which allows its scientists and researchers (the hazmat guys) to move in and out of the liminal space freely. It’s also what sets off the chain of various entries opening up around the world dropping unsuspecting victims inside the seemingly infinite hallways.
I thought I couldn’t be any more excited to watch Backrooms this weekend, but hearing how Parsons has been inspired by Portal has me even more intrigued to see how this film will pull off one of the greatest modern creepypastas the internet’s seen.
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