Okay, now that I am actually home, here's a little ramble about my thoughts on the Backrooms movie. Spoilers, ofc.
I LOVED IT. It's the first horror movie in a long, long time that actually scared me to be honest. Which I thoroughly enjoyed since it was a pleasant surprise! I go into most horror movies expecting to enjoy it even without necessarily being scared since I have been desensitized to a lot of things in horror media (not a flex, just a fact. Actually kind of dislike that I'm so desensitized-). I still enjoy those movies, but actually being scared by this one makes it even better in my opinion.
I find Clark to be an extremely interesting character (not just because I'm a simp please hear me out). The direction they took with him realizing that he doesn't want to change or better himself, and Mary directly telling him that he can stay the same? Almost as if the concept of simply not changing wasn't something he knew he had? Most movies don't go that route from what I've seen and it fascinated me to see this one do it.
Therapy only really works if you want to change, and I feel so many people go in thinking that they do, but don't actually want to. Like the idea of improving yourself is always good, but once you realize the work that you need to put in, or the realities of what that actually means, you learn you actually don't. And that is okay.
Then there's the other side of the situation, being Mary's side. She realizes that she can't save people. That being a therapist doesn't mean she's saving anyone, because that's not necessarily the job of a therapist. In a way, she somewhat went into being a therapist with the wrong idea of what it truly is: it isn't saving people, and is actually just helping them improve themselves. You can't help anybody who doesn't want it, and a therapist certainly can't help someone that doesn't truly want to change their lives.
I feel like the themes of the movie are very loaded and with multiple layers. There's the idea of cycling, of memories, of mental illness, and (most interesting to me) the positives and negatives of therapy and our mental health system. Yet, after only one watch (with some chatty people sitting besides myself and my friend that I had to ask to be quiet 😑), I could only come up with a small ramble. I might make a more in-depth post whenever I see it again!
Even if you see someone who you can feel sympathy for, despite knowing that they aren't the greatest person, you will never be able to fix or "save" them. They have to do it themselves. Mental illness is a genuine condition, much like a physical illness. Yet, a bit more uniquely, mental illness cannot be treated without the individual wanting and trying to get better. It doesn't just take medication or appointments, but whole lifestyle changes that go down to the very way you think.
You might be able to see the sympathetic points of their lives, like Clark struggling with debt, his habits of pushing people away, and his resulting loneliness - however, he doesn't want to change. His loneliness will not stop until he changes himself to better manage his anger, his blaming of others, and realizes he's the problem. Yet, he doesn't want to change. Upon finding a place where he wants to be, and feels at home in, he realizes that he truly doesn't want to better himself. You might be able to see them living a better life, but... They can't, and won't, if they don't want to. You shouldn't waste time trying to help someone who doesn't want to change.
Then there's the theme of therapy/the mental health system, both positive and negative. Mostly negative, though I feel the movie isn't against the concept lol. I think it's mostly just pointing out the flaws that I believe a lot of people don't necessarily talk about when it comes to mental health services and ESPECIALLY therapy. The people treating you might be well-meaning, but they are by no means flawless. They are their own individuals with their own struggles, and with therapy, their own styles of treating people.
In the beginning, Mary has Clark try the "roleplay" tactic again, despite the fact that Clark says that he feels stupid doing it. Then, there's the whole thing I mentioned earlier with the possible wrong reasons for becoming a therapist. I don't believe she ever had any bad intentions or ever purposefully mishandled Clark and his case, but I do believe she went about it in a catastrophically bad manner. She had him do something he said he felt made him feel stupid, unintentionally made him feel attacked when he tried explaining the strange things he found, and seemingly tried to dance around many issues he had. Especially during the scene where she outright tells him the problems in his life are of his own doing. I personally took it as her knowing all that from the start of the movie, but finally deciding to tell him to his face instead of trying to "lead" him to that conclusion, himself.
And the thing with therapy is that these things might've genuinely worked for another person. The roleplay she has him do, the way she handled him describing the backrooms, and her trying to lead him to the genuinely painful realization that he's at fault for many of the things he's facing? They all could work with someone else as her patient. Yet, they aren't a catch-all solution, and many of therapists seem to believe that their tactics would work for everybody. It doesn't help that a therapist might not know how badly a patient is struggling if they don't tell them or hide it from them, which some may do if they don't feel they trust the therapist and are too anxious to ask to change therapists. She might've genuinely thought he was getting better, or at the very least, not getting worse.
On the topic of getting worse, some people do get worse if they don't have the right therapist or just don't respond well to therapy. Like Clark gets so much worse in the movie during that scene where he is describing the still lives to Mary after LITERALLY kidnapping her. I'd say that's definitely a deterioration of his mental health compared to the start. And he even goes on to repeat the roleplay tactic from before, which I personally interpreted as like, trying to show how some techniques, or maybe even just wording, can unintentionally harm a patient. They might take the way advice is worded the wrong way and be worse off than before, or perhaps a healthy coping mechanism that was recommended to them can become maladaptive and become it's own problem?
Which, what I enjoy is that none of this is shown to make Mary bad, necessarily. She is shown to be trying her best, and her own past struggles are shown off, somewhat humanizing her. Her attempts to help are genuine, and she realizes her reasonings for becoming a therapist might not have been the correct ones by the end. Yet, even still, she does want to help Clark. Even if the only way she knows how to help him is to simply tell him she cannot help him, and that she doesn't need to change, even if many of his problems are because of his own actions.
Another thing I really enjoyed is how Clark is still kept like... human? I don't mean literally, of course, but he's shown to still be struggling even at his lowest. Even when he's fully gone off the deep end and is entrenched in his obsession with the backrooms, having his own therapist held hostage, he's still shown to have emotions. He's distressed, he cries, and he doesn't even argue with Mary once she tells him his problems to his face. Instead, after she tells him that he can stay the same and stay in the backrooms if that's what he wants, he lets her go. You'd expect him to lash out and kill her, like how a lot of movies would treat a character who's "lost it" and is known to have difficulties controlling their anger, but he doesn't. He lets her go, and even tries to calm down the still life of himself so he won't hurt her, introducing him to her and explaining what she said about them being able to stay the same. Even if staying the same would hurt them more, in the end.
I have plenty more thoughts on the movie, but like... I don't know how to put them into words. I wouldn't necessarily call this a review, but more of a ramble and slight analysis. So that's the end of my ramble, for now!
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