The Frontrooms

The Frontrooms is a shameless rip-off of a simple concept, executed poorly. It's actually fairly straightforward when it comes to plot, so it's not like it's some fascinatingly broken narrative to try to navigate. While I haven't seen any more of his work, Mike Hartsfield is given literally NOTHING to work with, other than wail about sudden doorlessness, so there's no hilariously bad acting or dialogue to enjoy. There's no action, by any definition of the word, to enjoy. Even the virtually non-existent special effects aren't bad enough to be amusing. It's absolutely and completely inert.

An argument could be made that this complete lack of anything puts the viewer into the position of someone trapped in the Frontrooms. That the utter pointlessness is the point.

Evan feels the need to spell out what The Backrooms (sorry, "The Frontrooms") are to you in great detail by literally putting Youtube videos of "experts" talking about it as if anyone will ever watch this film for any reason other than vague curiosity of it being a film based on a concept they're already familiar with, which makes it kinda hilarious that he doesn't seem to have even the vaguest idea of what makes the Backrooms compelling. The SCPfication of liminal spaces has already turned what started out as a conceptually unsettling story and made it into a boring bestiary of repetitive monster encounters, and even then, somehow the best The Frontrooms could come up with was a metalhead dude who they applied a filter onto and occasionally made pop up for a single frame and then vanish.

Not a shred of subtlety or even a commendable effort to make something of value despite lacking the budget here. I'm confident a 10 year old could write and shoot this entire film and probably do it better. The premise of being stuck inside your own office because the front door just straight up vanished is intriguing, but instead of exploring that in any way even remotely interesting, Evan defaults to exposition as he does for literally any event in this film.