So I’ve had time to sit with this movie for about a day, going over what I think worked and may have missed the mark, and I’ve been trying to put into words what my overall problem with this film is.
The word I’ve since landed on is promise.
The film is pretty good, especially on a technical front. It’s well shot, the music and sound effects are well placed, scenes flow together in the edit, actors are acting well, all that jazz. The themes are interesting and relevant, there’s a throughline connecting the backrooms with its characters and thematic core, and it’s fairly engaging the whole way through (save for a moment in the end of the second act where I was starting to grow bored of the backroom reveal for the third time.) For a first time director, this is a promising start.
But there is something that feels missing from the writing. Scenes at the beginning of the film show our protagonists, Clark and Mary, having their roleplay conversation in therapy that would later be repeated in the third act almost wholesale. The therapy session and the language of the film— the dialogue focusing on Clark expressing his emotions, his embarrassment and discomfort yet ease with which he calls Mary fat and lazy, the camera pushing in on these moments— implies that there is going to be an arc with Clark either positive or negative.
And sure, Clark finds the backrooms and starts cataloging it, documenting it via camera and drawings and the like. He gets his employees killed in the process. But the film then doesn’t seem interested in his reaction to these deaths, the horror of the backrooms or the allure of it as the third act would then go on to hand-wave. Yadda yadda, he likes it now. His employees die in a violent way, he runs and tries to save Kat through a wall, the camera is picked up by Pirate Clark and then… what? Several days pass and he not only survives Pirate Clark but also convinces himself that the infinite maze with roaming monsters is cool and preferable to normal life?
I’d understand if this is meant to be a reflection on how shitty his regular life was or at least he perceived it to be to the point where the thought of living with brainless not-people in an infinite maze was better, but I simply cannot believe it based on the little evidence I’ve been shown. Clark, caught up in his cycle of hating his job, hating his ex and the world, retreats to a place that is always lit by fluorescent bulbs just like his job. Is this a commentary on the cycles we choose even when we believe we’ve escaped? If it is, I’m going to need a little more proof. It’s only compelling in theory because in practice, it comes across as rushed.
I can’t even feel horrified or satisfied with his death at the hands of Pirate Clark (one reason was because I had jokingly thought ‘aww he’s going to cuddle him’ which more reflected on how not scared I was during this horror film) because it gives me so little to grasp. I cannot decipher Clark’s delusion or where it originated, how it progressed or how it ends. How did he escape Pirate Clark the first time? It’s implied that he thinks they are the same or reflections of one another with “We don’t have to change” but he just explained to Mary that the people made in the backrooms are their own misremembered versions of people. Why would Pirate Clark be directly connected to him in a way that none of the other people are? Why should I feel that betrayal or unraveling as he’s killed as mercilessly as Kat or Bobby (?) when there’s been no evidence that this wouldn’t be an eventuality? If there is evidence, I want to see it! I was promised an arc!
What makes me all the more disappointed is how the film seems to get it mostly right with its other protagonist. Mary, a psychologist, is haunted by a childhood defined by her agoraphobic mother who was later institutionalised. Flashbacks of Mary’s childhood are placed throughout the film and, really cleverly, are implied to be unreliable. The door didn’t literally explode but the memory of something coming to Mary’s home and taking her mother away would make that feel emotionally true. Normal life was broken into, disrupted suddenly. I think Mary’s mother has a pitched down voice. I imagine a child afraid of her own mother might mentally exaggerate that voice to sound deeper, more authoritative and unnatural.
The house is also copied in the backrooms, its likeness gradually deteriorating with each iteration. This is a great parallel with Mary’s memory and the core basis of the film: cycles cannot rejuvenate, they only deteriorate. Memories get worse, mental pathways stick and become harder to logically justify, everything decays and it is only change that will slow it down. I really love that scene! It’s like the thesis statement of the film summarised visually.
But I don’t feel satisfied with Mary’s arc. She has been carrying around this memento of the house: a bit of concrete with her younger self’s hand imprinted. She even carries it around in her pocket when she goes to find Clark at the store. She then, I suppose, lets go of her past by using it to smash Pirate Clark in the face multiple times, shattering the concrete and destroying that baby imprint.
Is this a conscious moment of letting go, or purely a survival instinct? I think that matters if you’re going to argue that it’s the climax to a character arc. The concrete piece means a lot to Mary emotionally, but it’s also the only item left to use against a threat. Is this a symbolic gesture, showing she is capable of changing priorities while Pirate Clark reflects an inability or unwillingness to change at all? Does this rock carry any more weight emotionally than the conveniently placed coat stand she used 2 minutes prior? Is this reveal an irony, that the thing that saves her is the trauma she has been carrying with her and encouraging her audience to let go? Or is this more of a Chekov’s Gun situation where the rock has little emotional stake but the fact that it will later be used is more important?
With this film, I feel like the pacing of this action scene makes it so that any of these possibilities is true which would be paradoxical. It is both important and not important to this character. It is both a great sacrifice and nothing at all. It both shows a great amount of change and reflects very little change. She does not get a moment to mourn the rock. In an action scene, sure. But she also does not seem to care after she is rescued and safe to reflect on the events of the day. Pieces do not stick to her clothes that she later puts together in the palms of her hand. She does not feel in her pocket for a comforting piece of home only to remember it is gone forever. Is this the arc?
The film before this point also hasn’t given me enough of modern Mary to tell for certain that this is even her arc. I’m honestly not sure what to make of the house party scene. There’s a mother and daughter she wistfully looks at, then she pops a pill in private. It makes sense to have her mourn a relationship she could’ve had with her mother, but I don’t see her being particularly motivated by this alone. I think more details into how she interacts or fails to interact with other people would have fleshed out her character more and made her feel more solid.
How else has this trauma defined her? Does she think about having her own children? Has she given this any thought at all? Does it impact her relationships with others? Does she intentionally avoid mothers or does she seek them out? Is she constantly aware of the traits her mother used to have and is trying to avoid them? Is she repeating a cycle of fear and self-harm? What else am I supposed to latch onto if the basis of her character is ‘my childhood was traumatic and I think about it a lot’ if it doesn’t impact other aspects of her life? Show me that she thinks about it in context to her life, not just in these disconnected flashbacks.
Why have you written characters that are only potentially interesting?
Why would you write it so that the characters have a potential link to the core thesis and horror of the film?
That’s why I have been struggling to grasp this film. Potential is slippery. It works for ambiguous endings because you have already been given enough metaphor and context to draw a conclusion about what the film is about. I like the ending, I think the final shots are really cool and I like that it’s implied that Mary won’t be leaving alive. I think it’s a tragic and powerful way of saying that change will end the cycle but it isn’t always easy or even safe. The consequences may even be lethal. It doesn’t work for when there are no boundaries on the characters or their arcs. That conclusion I just drew from the ending is more speculation and extrapolation because, again, I know next to nothing about Mary apart from her sad childhood.
I think Backrooms shows promise, but I really wish it executed at least one of its thematic ideas as solidly as it did its visual presentation. Because potential alone doesn’t make a story good, and promising a story you can’t finish is disappointing.
