Tag: finn bennett

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still from Kane Parsons's "Backrooms," depicting Chiwetel Ejiofor in a brightly lit yellow room, as reviewed and analyzed by poet and film critic Ezekiel Yu for the automachination literary magazine.

I Think I Like It In Here: Reviewing Kane Parsons’s “Backrooms” (2026)

Kane Parsons’s “Backrooms” is the first mainstream film that I’m aware of to have been inspired by, of all things, a 4chan post. Chances are you already know about the Backrooms, especially if you’re Gen Z or a millennial or have spent any significant amount of time memeing on the Internet. If you don’t, then it’s a simple enough concept to explain. Imagine a dank, yellow-wallpapered office space, empty of all features save the blank angularity of walls and a vaguely unsettling openness. Now imagine that going on and on, forever.

It’s a weird alternate take on our reality, as if the universal software had glitched and copy-pasted this uncanny liminal space into its own pocket dimension. An anon on the original 4chan post (which featured on one of the site’s forums dedicated to paranormal phenomena), however, explains it more evocatively:

“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in

“God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you”

—Anonymous, 4chan (May 13, 2019) […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still from Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza's "Warfare" (2025), as reviewed by Ezekiel Yu, depicting American soldiers in Iraq shouting, laughing, and celebrating in a small room.

Collapse: on Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s “Warfare” (2025)

Though Warfare is certainly one of the most visceral films of the year, there is also a curious distance to it; this has partly to do with the all-encompassing generalization of the title. It’s not named after the squad(s) of Navy SEALs involved, nor “The Battle of Ramadi” (the 2006 Iraq War conflict on which the action is based), nor any other event-specific element the salience of which would have worked perfectly fine as title—it’s simply “warfare.” This is what happens in war, the choice seems to say. Swap these young American soldiers for WWII paratroopers or Napoleonic cavalrymen, or Zulu warriors, for that matter: at the end of the day, they can be substituted for any number of able-bodied youths who are sent off somewhere to fight together and kill and, likely, die.

Yet, at the same time, there are things about this particular episode of bloodletting that are inextricable from its period in history. These are American Special Forces, and the writer-director team of Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza (a former SEAL whose firsthand account of Ramadi serves as the basis of Warfare’s narrative) do not skimp on the accuracy of militaristic procedure: their script is almost entirely jargon, though judiciously peppered with boyish camaraderie and moments of unfiltered human horror. Even a naïve viewer can see that the attention to detail is unique, and the film certainly takes its time walking the viewer through the almost bureaucratic process of holding down a defensive position, under enemy fire, whilst requesting extraction after your position has been exposed. […]