Backrooms wouldn't exist without Robin Williams' underrated psychological thriller

Kane Parsons agrees

As Obsession continues to be a surprise box office juggernaut, the new horror film Backrooms has followed that up with the largest-ever opening weekend for an original horror movie. Backrooms is about a lonely, frustrated furniture store owner who discovers an invisible doorway in the downstairs of his business. Once he steps through it, he finds a seemingly endless series of office-building like rooms with familiar-yet-distorted items and a bizarre entity within.

The film is based on the beloved “Backrooms” creepypasta, which began in the 2010s with a single online image of an offputting office space and expanded into a sprawling, user-generated sci-fi horror universe. But according to director Kane Parsons, the new movie also draws inspiration from a 2002 horror thriller starring one of the most beloved performers of all time in his scariest-ever role.

Written and directed by Mark Romanek, One Hour Photo stars Robin Williams as Sy Parrish, a lonely photo technician at a Walmart-like department store who obsesses over the lives of one of his regular customers. Released in 2002, the movie was praised primarily for Williams’ unsettling performance and unrecognizable transformation. For a man who commanded the spotlight like no other, Williams not only disappeared into the role of Sy, but the meek and forgettable Sy al almost seems to disappear into the background at times.

In an interview with Letterboxd, Parsons said One Hour Photo is “thoroughly in the language of Backrooms, where it's a story that focuses on an individual who's sort of fallen into an isolated place in life where he's got his profession and he's got the deal he's made with the modern world and the world we live in, and how he uses some very specific technical functions of this modern world to give him a profound feeling of purpose.”

In Backrooms, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Clark pours himself into the work of running his discount furniture store to the point where it has ruined the relationships in his life. As for Sy in One Hour Photo, it seems he’s been alone for a long time and puts his energy into a meticulous perfectionism over the photos he develops.

In a different interview with Variety, Parsons also said One Hour Photo inspired the look of the outside world in Backrooms, which has a vibrancy to it that seems a bit too perfect, contrasting with the yellow walls and fluorescent lights in the Backrooms. One Hour Photo, while while Williams’ performance is the movie’s greatest asset, it also has rather brilliant cinematography thanks to Jeff Cronenweth (Fight Club, The Social Network). Most of the film — particularly in the department store — has a picture-perfect quality to it. Everything is brightly lit and intricately framed, echoing the photographs that Sy is developing.

Parsons doesn't cite this in any interviews, but there also seems to be an atmospheric similarity between Sy’s department store and Clark's exploration of the backrooms. Before Clark gets too deep into the messier, more distorted Backrooms, there’s a striking emptiness to the earlier rooms he finds. Even with the mostly mundane furniture and objects positioned partway through the floors and walls, most of the backrooms feel empty and eerily silent, with just the electric buzz of fluorescent lights heard for minutes at a time. While that quality was a part of the earliest elements of the creepypasta, One Hour Photo’s department store also seems uncomfortably empty and silent at times with only the sound of fluorescent lights to fill the space.

One Hour Photo does have some shortcomings. The story progression never quite lives up to the promise of the atmosphere the movie creates or the transformation by Williams, but as a beautifully framed character piece, the movie is well worth a look. With all of his great movies and performances, it is a ridiculous understatement to say that Robin Williams was a brilliant actor, but if you have not seen him in One Hour Photo you simply do not know the full extent of his monumental talent.

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One Hour Photo is available to rent from Apple TV and Prime Video. Backrooms is in theaters now.