I Finally Check Out Three Summer Horror Films...Leviticus, Backrooms, & Obsession
By Dan Pal
You may have noticed that I don’t review a lot of horror films. Even though I may have mentioned that the first movie I can recall seeing was Night of the Living Dead and my favorite television series as a kid was Dark Shadows, I’ve never been a big fan of the genre. It’s true that I also taught a course on Alfred Hitchcock for many years but his films were more suspense filled than horrifying, with the possible exceptions of Psycho and The Birds.
Over the years, the horror genre has evolved into something which has never appealed to me. After 1978’s Halloween (which I did see), we got decades of slasher films which basically followed the same formula. The exception was Scream which was a satire on the entire genre although many may not have seen it that way. I didn’t see the Freddy Krueger films and never saw any of the Saw films. However, this summer three films have been released that have been hailed in different circles for a variety of reasons. Trying to be a good film critic, I thought it was time to check out Leviticus, Backrooms, & Obsession. Leviticus was a big hit at the Sundance Film Festival this past January and was deemed the first true gay horror love story. Backrooms, on the other hand, made a major name for itself first as a YouTube series and then as a hugely successful film by a twenty-year old director. Obsession is one of the big box office sensations of the year which some have even suggested has Oscar potential.
So, what is it about these films that have audiences so enraptured and have they turned me into a fan of contemporary horror/thrillers? To answer the first part of this, let’s take a look at what binds them together. Each film begins with people whose love for another takes them down dark roads. In Leviticus, two teenage boys, Naim and Ryan, start what appears to be a pretty special and loving relationship.
The problem is that they live in a town whose residents are highly ingrained with their religious beliefs. One of these is the ridiculous notion that same- sex love can be easily wiped away with some magical hocus pocus. While the real-life parallel is evil conversion therapy, these church-goers have developed some kind of potion that turns one’s object of affection into a demon that can only be seen by the person in love. Ryan becomes an evil being to Haim and vice versa. As such, the situation between the boys becomes increasingly dire and horrific. The film itself becomes a stage for destructive acts and bloody violence.
Backrooms features a man named Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who was recently kicked out of his house by his wife. With nowhere to go, he sleeps in the furniture store where he is employed only to discover secret rooms, walls that can be walked through, and multiple floors where serious distortions are present.
Along the way, his therapist Mary, played by Oscar-nominee Renate Reinsve, gets pulled into the spooky world which also features a very large pirate that has some serious chasing to do.
Obsession begins with an attractive but socially awkward twentysomething guy nicknamed Bear (Michael Johnston), who has fallen for his equally attractive co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette.) While in a local store he finds a product called a “One Wish Willow” which offers buyers one wish.
Of course, Bear tries it out and wishes that Nikki would fall in love with him. This leads to the obsession of the title in which Nikki becomes alarmingly attached to him.
In each case, a man experiences a dark struggle due to the love they feel for someone else. In the case of Naim and Bear in Leviticus, that love is just burgeoning. Clark in Backrooms has already been spurned by his wife. Bear finds his love interest becoming psychologically unhinged after they get together. All three though can’t seem to hold onto the “sane” version of their lovers. Each is terrorized, physically and/or emotionally. (Clark is dealing with more of the ladder.) Each of the males has to go through some extreme and hysterical drama as a result of their love for another.
The settings for the films feature increasingly strange behavior, whether involving actual attacks by one lover onto another (Bear, Haim) or by the architectural nature of their physical circumstances (Clark’s furniture store.) This, of course, is the mark of a classic horror film. Intensity is a must to keep audiences on the edge of their seats.
The problem I have with the films and the genre in general is that in each case what starts as fairly common situations filled with everyday conversations and decent character development, goes so extreme that any real connection to the material and thematic ideas gets lost. True, the most relatable situation could be Bear’s falling for a woman who gets more and more unhinged, thus terrifying young straight men who might question dating after seeing the film. But the extreme behaviors that occur in all three of these films could never happen in any real-life situation. The horrors become often grotesque, bloody, and cause a complete transformation of characters. The filmmakers rely on visual effects and make-up to over-emphasize whatever message they might be expressing. (This was also true of The Substance two years ago but that one came off as a bit more fun in the end then, I would argue, any of these three do.)
Still, the films do have some merits. The world of Backrooms has been produced using very well-crafted production design. The rooms and floors are cold, overly large, and increasingly distorted to match the different levels of the story. I also liked the therapy session between Clark and Mary which offers some interesting depth to the former’s predicament.
Similarly, the characters of Naim and Ryan in Leviticus, while distinctive, also develop a quick but natural intimate relationship that accentuates the feelings and chemistry they clearly have. (Thanks, in part, to the actors Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen.)
Obsession does a great job of slowly building to the freakier parts of the story by creating interesting young adult characters that feel, for the most part, grounded in today’s reality. All three films have excellent, early dialogue scenes which offer a nice gateway into the narratives. Both Backrooms and Leviticus also have opening scenes featuring characters that we never really get to know but that tease later horrors.
Obsession’s closest film cousin would be the 1987 classic, Fatal Attraction. That film though at least stays grounded (again, for the most part) making the situation the main character finds himself in even scarier than what Bear experiences in Obsession. Reality isn’t suspended to the same degree in Fatal Attraction which features a man, played by Michael Douglas, getting involved with an emotionally unstable and obsessed woman (Glenn Close.) Obsession suggests it is the mystical wish that causes her undoing rather than basic human mental illness. Obsession does allude to something about drugs, in this case, Oxycodone, and its effects on personality and moods. Whether those have played into Bear or Nikki’s emotional deceleration is not clearly developed.
The whole idea of who is really the “insane” one is also evident in Backrooms where Mary, the therapist, has some childhood trauma in her past and has previously written a book called The Hidden Self suggesting that while she might be digging deep into Clark’s disturbed mind, she also has her own demons lurking within. Whose “backrooms” are we really entering in the film then? It could be both.
In the end, all three films suggest that love can make one lose control. Since these films have been successful, one must ask why we might be obsessed with such an idea. Do these stories confirm our own fears? Are we to be happy that we don’t have such relationships?
Have these films changed my perspective on contemporary horror?Not really.I could have done without seeing any of them.Yes, it’s great that gay cinema has come so far that we can now do the same horrific things on screen as straight people do.Being careful what you wish for is an old cliché built up in Obsession and it’s probably not a good idea to sleep in a department store as Clark does in Backrooms.I still prefer the character development and dialogue that is minimally found in each of these films and would love to see other stories surrounding these characters that don’t end up so wildly overblown but then, that’s just me, who finds the horror in the many realities of the world we live in today much scarier.
By Dan Pal
You may have noticed that I don’t review a lot of horror films. Even though I may have mentioned that the first movie I can recall seeing was Night of the Living Dead and my favorite television series as a kid was Dark Shadows, I’ve never been a big fan of the genre. It’s true that I also taught a course on Alfred Hitchcock for many years but his films were more suspense filled than horrifying, with the possible exceptions of Psycho and The Birds.
Over the years, the horror genre has evolved into something which has never appealed to me. After 1978’s Halloween (which I did see), we got decades of slasher films which basically followed the same formula. The exception was Scream which was a satire on the entire genre although many may not have seen it that way. I didn’t see the Freddy Krueger films and never saw any of the Saw films. However, this summer three films have been released that have been hailed in different circles for a variety of reasons. Trying to be a good film critic, I thought it was time to check out Leviticus, Backrooms, & Obsession. Leviticus was a big hit at the Sundance Film Festival this past January and was deemed the first true gay horror love story. Backrooms, on the other hand, made a major name for itself first as a YouTube series and then as a hugely successful film by a twenty-year old director. Obsession is one of the big box office sensations of the year which some have even suggested has Oscar potential.
So, what is it about these films that have audiences so enraptured and have they turned me into a fan of contemporary horror/thrillers? To answer the first part of this, let’s take a look at what binds them together. Each film begins with people whose love for another takes them down dark roads. In Leviticus, two teenage boys, Naim and Ryan, start what appears to be a pretty special and loving relationship.
The problem is that they live in a town whose residents are highly ingrained with their religious beliefs. One of these is the ridiculous notion that same- sex love can be easily wiped away with some magical hocus pocus. While the real-life parallel is evil conversion therapy, these church-goers have developed some kind of potion that turns one’s object of affection into a demon that can only be seen by the person in love. Ryan becomes an evil being to Haim and vice versa. As such, the situation between the boys becomes increasingly dire and horrific. The film itself becomes a stage for destructive acts and bloody violence.
Backrooms features a man named Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who was recently kicked out of his house by his wife. With nowhere to go, he sleeps in the furniture store where he is employed only to discover secret rooms, walls that can be walked through, and multiple floors where serious distortions are present.
Along the way, his therapist Mary, played by Oscar-nominee Renate Reinsve, gets pulled into the spooky world which also features a very large pirate that has some serious chasing to do.
Obsession begins with an attractive but socially awkward twentysomething guy nicknamed Bear (Michael Johnston), who has fallen for his equally attractive co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette.) While in a local store he finds a product called a “One Wish Willow” which offers buyers one wish.
Of course, Bear tries it out and wishes that Nikki would fall in love with him. This leads to the obsession of the title in which Nikki becomes alarmingly attached to him.
In each case, a man experiences a dark struggle due to the love they feel for someone else. In the case of Naim and Bear in Leviticus, that love is just burgeoning. Clark in Backrooms has already been spurned by his wife. Bear finds his love interest becoming psychologically unhinged after they get together. All three though can’t seem to hold onto the “sane” version of their lovers. Each is terrorized, physically and/or emotionally. (Clark is dealing with more of the ladder.) Each of the males has to go through some extreme and hysterical drama as a result of their love for another.
The settings for the films feature increasingly strange behavior, whether involving actual attacks by one lover onto another (Bear, Haim) or by the architectural nature of their physical circumstances (Clark’s furniture store.) This, of course, is the mark of a classic horror film. Intensity is a must to keep audiences on the edge of their seats.
The problem I have with the films and the genre in general is that in each case what starts as fairly common situations filled with everyday conversations and decent character development, goes so extreme that any real connection to the material and thematic ideas gets lost. True, the most relatable situation could be Bear’s falling for a woman who gets more and more unhinged, thus terrifying young straight men who might question dating after seeing the film. But the extreme behaviors that occur in all three of these films could never happen in any real-life situation. The horrors become often grotesque, bloody, and cause a complete transformation of characters. The filmmakers rely on visual effects and make-up to over-emphasize whatever message they might be expressing. (This was also true of The Substance two years ago but that one came off as a bit more fun in the end then, I would argue, any of these three do.)
Still, the films do have some merits. The world of Backrooms has been produced using very well-crafted production design. The rooms and floors are cold, overly large, and increasingly distorted to match the different levels of the story. I also liked the therapy session between Clark and Mary which offers some interesting depth to the former’s predicament.
Similarly, the characters of Naim and Ryan in Leviticus, while distinctive, also develop a quick but natural intimate relationship that accentuates the feelings and chemistry they clearly have. (Thanks, in part, to the actors Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen.)
Obsession does a great job of slowly building to the freakier parts of the story by creating interesting young adult characters that feel, for the most part, grounded in today’s reality. All three films have excellent, early dialogue scenes which offer a nice gateway into the narratives. Both Backrooms and Leviticus also have opening scenes featuring characters that we never really get to know but that tease later horrors.
Obsession’s closest film cousin would be the 1987 classic, Fatal Attraction. That film though at least stays grounded (again, for the most part) making the situation the main character finds himself in even scarier than what Bear experiences in Obsession. Reality isn’t suspended to the same degree in Fatal Attraction which features a man, played by Michael Douglas, getting involved with an emotionally unstable and obsessed woman (Glenn Close.) Obsession suggests it is the mystical wish that causes her undoing rather than basic human mental illness. Obsession does allude to something about drugs, in this case, Oxycodone, and its effects on personality and moods. Whether those have played into Bear or Nikki’s emotional deceleration is not clearly developed.
The whole idea of who is really the “insane” one is also evident in Backrooms where Mary, the therapist, has some childhood trauma in her past and has previously written a book called The Hidden Self suggesting that while she might be digging deep into Clark’s disturbed mind, she also has her own demons lurking within. Whose “backrooms” are we really entering in the film then? It could be both.
In the end, all three films suggest that love can make one lose control. Since these films have been successful, one must ask why we might be obsessed with such an idea. Do these stories confirm our own fears? Are we to be happy that we don’t have such relationships?
Have these films changed my perspective on contemporary horror?Not really.I could have done without seeing any of them.Yes, it’s great that gay cinema has come so far that we can now do the same horrific things on screen as straight people do.Being careful what you wish for is an old cliché built up in Obsession and it’s probably not a good idea to sleep in a department store as Clark does in Backrooms.I still prefer the character development and dialogue that is minimally found in each of these films and would love to see other stories surrounding these characters that don’t end up so wildly overblown but then, that’s just me, who finds the horror in the many realities of the world we live in today much scarier.
