honestly i loved how there wasn't any "escape" or leaving. it really was just the situation and the reveal of them all being digital copies of the real selves. in which they decide to change and embrace things, all of them choosing to do better and acceptance of themselves in making the circus their own and create what they want.
even caine getting moment of reflection in realizing what he has done and given the chance to grow and change as well and to be accepted.
the moment where he showed them all the "human" versions and what they are all doing, was the most beautiful and just soul touching moment, and it really hit hard for me.
ragatha getting away from her mother, Jax getting friends and a stable job, Pomni getting out there and exploring more to do, Kinger having a family, zooble able to open her own bar, gangle quitting her job and getting one shes content and happy with while making her own comics. even caine just learning to let go and grow to let others in and have control so he can be accepted to.
all of this really hit the most for me.
the fact the human selves were all able to grow and be able to be happy themselves and find their own marks and dreams just....was very important to me. in now matter how dark things may get there is always something to do and things can get better.
even the end where they all just for a brief moment in the real world just sit together was just like....they don't know each other and have no reason to meet but just for a moment are drawn together.
jax getting abstracted and not being able to change back was bittersweet but them still loving him and the other abstractions in trying to help them all. leaving open on possibility in trying to help them heal.
I literally cried at the end when pomni waved goodbye.....thank you amazing digital circus.
So I saw the "Backrooms" movie and I really liked it. I should state I am not someone who watches horror movies. Horror is a thing I study from afar, like a bird watcher. It is a genre that has long fascinated me, but I am far too much of a sissypants to participate in it directly. I'll watch other people react to movies or play the games, I seem to need that extra degree of separation.
But this is something I've known directly for a long time.
Perhaps fittingly, I do not remember how I became aware of The Backrooms as a phenomenon. It was either SuperEyepatchWolf's video about liminal spaces, or possibly one of TheLibrarian's Gary's MOD walk throughs. I wasn't there for Reddit, for the original post.
But I have been There.
Apparently, other people have had nightmares about endless office buildings, malls that go on forever, indoor pools that could hold every water park in the world and then some, spaces that seem to be procedurally generated by an LLM that doesn't actually know what a building is or how architecture works. I've been having dreams like that since I was about five years old. I've walked those halls a long time. I still am.
All that to say, I went into the Backrooms phenomenon already knowing a lot, but only recently having learned the name of what I'd been experiencing for the last forty years. Although he's written the book on the Backrooms, I never fully agreed with Kane Parson's take on them. His shorts tend to focus on the team of scientists and the entities they encounter, which to me is the least interesting part.
I'm happy to say the movie took a different tack.
Here are some non-spoily Trigger Warnings/heads up if you're thinking about seeing it but aren't a horror aficionado.
- If you're familiar with the source material and the KanePixel shorts, that will help a lot, but is not mandatory.
- It's fairly low key, relying more one atmosphere and psychological suspense rather than jump scares or monsters.
- There IS a monster, but we'll get to him in a minute.
- There is one (1) jump scare quite early on and you can kinda see it coming.
- There's a brief bit with flashing lights.
- There is some non-gory body horror.
- There is one (1) already dead seagull.
- All gore happens off camera, and the disturbing imagery is just some AI bullshit made 3D. If you've played "The Complex: Found Footage" you'll be fine.
- Colorful language. Really if they'd had fewer F-bombs, this movie could have very easily gotten away with a PG13.
SPOILERS AHEAD
So quick rundown. It is 1992. Clark is a shitty guy with a shitty job whose wife threw him out for being a drunken shithead. We learn pretty early on that Clark needs to work on himself, but he has to WANT to do this and he's not out of the "pity party" stage yet. His therapist, Mary, has her own hangups that are alluded to in flashbacks that pop up throughout the movie. I genuinely wish we'd been given a bit more about her, but I understand why her information is so sparse.
Clark wanted to be an architect but got stuck in a dead-end job selling discount furniture. He's actually sleeping at the store because he has nowhere else to go. He literally stumbles into the Backrooms and it begins trying to map it. He shows it to his two employees and promptly accidentally gets them both killed. Clark, however, assimilates and survives quite happily there.
Mary eventually comes looking for him, tries to slap some sense into him, but is unsuccessful. Clark is not ready to change. It's revealed that the "monster" is a twisted parody of what Clark had become: a living version of the store mascot with Clark's face. This embodiment of his own bad behavior bites Clark's head off and chases Mary into an area that was rigged as a trap to try to capture it. Mary is rescued by the HAZMAT suit scientists and we're left wondering if any of that was real?
It's a lot more involved and nuanced than that, but that's the 30 second version.
Here are my thoughts in no particular order:
- This movie is apparently a bit divisive. There is camp of people who think the monster looks silly, that it's leaning too far into FNAF and they can't take it seriously. Here's the thing. The monster is the embodiment of Clark's shittiness. In and of itself, it's not scary, but what it represents is. The fact your own bad habits that WILL eventually come back to bite you in the face. Clark was unwilling to put in the work to get over himself and was (literally) consumed by his toxic behavior made manifest.
- The same actress plays Mary as well as her mother. It was a very interesting casting choice and works well as a visual metaphor for generational trauma. Mary is trying very hard to rise above her past, but remains tethered to it in very subtle ways.
- Mary's mother obviously has mental health issues, though we're not sure what they are, how she got them, or why she has them. That information is never shared with us. All we see is the effect it had on Mary.
- The Backrooms here are treated almost the same way as Silent Hill: you bring our own monsters in with you and whether or not you survive is up to you. If you can conquer your own demons, you can escape, but you'll leave your trauma behind in a twisted echo of the person you used to be.
- No one said it outright because it's supposed to be 1992, but there are some very obvious parallels drawn with LLMs. The same example is used at least three times: "It's like if you asked a person who didn't know what a dog was to draw a dog based on description alone." LLMs don't truly understand what an office is, or how it works. The Backrooms are like if you told an LLM to build an office, build an indoor pool, build a suburban neighborhood and of course nothing comes out quite right because a computer program can only work off of what it's given.
Put a pin in that. We'll circle back.
- I was at first unsure where they were going with the few entities we do meet. They're not really entities, more like NPC's. Aside from Carl's monster, we get three NPCs whom I have named Candace (lady in the red suit), George (guy with too many eyes in the striped shirt), and Reggie (wheelchair lamp). At first you're primed to be afraid of them. Later, it's revealed that they aren't dangerous. They're just kinda there. Just as the Backrooms are a space constructed without context or purpose, they are an attempt to render people but with only the most general understanding of what that entails.
Candace looks like she was caught in a photo turning her head, her face affected by permanent motion blur. Her outfit is a cross between a suit and a dress and has too many buttons that don't appear to do anything. Reggie is fused with his wheelchair, end table, and beaded lamp. He has too many fingers on too many hands. George has too many eyes, too many collars on his shirt, and is seemingly full of Polyfill. They don't talk, their interaction is limited, but they aren't mindless lumps either.
Candace in particular serves as an alarm, booking it when she senses Carl's monster is near. Reggie also seems to be paying attention, turning on his lamp whenever the lights go out, and also to signal his feelings on whatever is going on. George seems resigned to the whole thing, or perhaps he is aware that Carl needs him to survive, quietly letting him do what he needs to with the awareness that it will not hurt him in the long run.
- The sets on this are fairly simple and impressively dated. The film is set in 1992, and as someone who was there, I can't award many points for historical accuracy. HOWEVER, there may be method to the madness.
- I understand that Carl doesn't have a lot of money, but he's driving the same Rambler as Mr. Incredible; a car that was popular in the 60s. Mary drives a large sedan, indicative of her successful career. Kinda reminds me of my dad's old Lincoln Town car. It has a rounded hood which was just becoming popular in the 90s. I don't know a ton about cars, but my dad's Lincoln was from 1991 and still had a fairly boxy nose. I'd have to double check what Mary was driving but this is either a brand new car fresh off the lot, or is a vehicle from The Future.
- Why is no one wearing a seat belt? Is this deliberate? I remember my mum yelling at dad to put his seat belt on because he would always forget. They're Boomers and grew up with cars that had no seat belts, but seat belts have been mandatory since 1984. Most of the yelling happened in the 80s when seat belts were still new and I was just a little kid. I know there were a lot of people back then who would forget or deliberately not use their seat belt as a silent protest against The Man or some nonsense but...idk. If there's a hidden meaning here, it eludes me, but it did make me tilt my head and go "Huh. That's an interesting detail."
- That is 300% Not how camcorders work but I commend the creative use of framing and visual noise to convey danger/stress.
- The retro furniture was fun and very impressive, but everything seemed either slightly too old or slightly too new. The blonde and pink pine sure was a throwback, as were the Memphis/Tex Mex textiles. I recognized quite a few pieces that I had seen in hotels and friends' houses. The clothes however....
- Fashion moved a lot slower back then. Even still, everyone's clothes seemed weirdly out of date or a strange mishmash of eras.
Carl is the most solidly early 90s. He starts the movie in a gray suit with a purple shirt and purple tie (this is a bit progressive for the early 90s but we've got to visually mark our boy so I'll forgive it. Also he's black so there's going to automatically be more Style (TM) there than if he was some basic white guy). Later, he's dressed in a more casual outfit that looks like he stole it out of my dad's closet: a red/green plaid shirt from LL Bean with a white t-shirt underneath, Levi straight legs, a brown leather belt, and sneakers that look a bit too modern for the era. I'll give him a pass because Sneaker Culture, but they don't look like pre-2000s sneakers. I'd have expected him to be wearing Ye Olde gray Nike running shoes. My dad went through quite a succession of those. Indeed, he still wears them.
- Now for the supporting cast. Cutoff T-shirts were a very niche thing in the *80s*, particularly in the Punk subculture. Yes we had midriff shirts in the 90s, but that was AFTER 1995 and they were almost exclusively a female thing.
- Kat's outfit is much more late 90s/very early 2000s. I had a red version of her green t-shirt and I got that at the GAP in '98 or '99. She's running around in early 80s pink foam flip-flops, late 90s jean shorts, and a zip-up hoodie. And she is supposedly working retail. Carl calls her his Assistant Manager. If you showed up for a retail job wearing that in 1992? No. Hell no. You'd get fired SO fast. Business Casual did not become A Thing until after mid-decade. I have a vivid memory of my dad sadly packing up all his old suits to donate because suits had become passe. The company dress code had changed, and they were all wearing khakis and blue button-ups now. This was in 1996. Even still, her shorts-and-flipflops combo would not have flown. It wouldn't fly even now.
- Bobby is wearing a cutoff t-shirt which I would give a pass IF the rest of his wardrobe matched the 80s Hair Band aesthetic. Instead of tapered leg or straight leg jeans, he's wearing wide leg denim shorts and Doc Martens. His hair is much too modern. If he had a mullet or a rat tail I'd forgive it. He's halfway there, why not put him in full Grunge? Tie a flannel shirt around his waist, give him a wallet chain. Put him in over-sized overalls with only one strap in place. That would be perfect. But perplexingly, he's only halfway there and his look ends up being a patchwork of eras that don't go together.
- Mary's wardrobe is the most dated. Her office wear is that of the late 70s/early 80s. She can't be more than 30, yet she's wearing the clothes of an older woman. As a friend pointed out, these are the clothes of her mother. I don't know if they are *actually* her mom's clothes, but they are the sort of professional clothes that a mature woman would have worn when Mary was growing up. Vintage and thrifting weren't A Thing yet. Secondhand stores existed, but they were for the very poor or for niche subcultures. Why is Mary wearing clothes that would have had to have been purchased 10-20 years ago when she would have been too young to wear them? She would have had no other way to acquire them unless she inherited them. (Maybe she IS wearing her mom's old stuff idk.)
Even her "adventuring" outfit feels out of place. The blazer escaped the mid-80s and has shoulder pads that would take your eye out. Her shirt looks like grandma's curtains c 1984. The trousers are slightly too short and yes the wide leg was popular in the 90s but again not until AFTER 1995. The loafers are more 1980s than 90s and are the only thing that might be era-appropriate.
She starts the film with a "Quistis" (FF8) or very early Jennifer Anniston (Friends first aired in 1994) hairstyle with her hair pulled back in a ponytail and her bangs hanging down in two long locks on either side of her face. If it's 1992 she should have what my sister calls "starchy bangs". We were still titrating down off the 1980s perm and most adult women still wore their hair rather short and heavily styled. Think Princess Diana, think every female news anchor, think your mom when you were like 8. Her hair is more late 90s than early 90s and clashes with her late 70s/early 80s clothes.
- Now to the pin. Kane Parsons was not around in the 90s. My dude is only 20yrs old. He doesn't know what the 90s were like. Or the 80s. Or the 70s. All he has to go on is pop-culture and judging from this movie, most of that came in the form of horror movies from the 70s and 80s.
He himself is reconstructing an era from other people's memories and as someone who lived the 80s and 90s, I can attest that it did not come out true to life. Like the dog drawn from description, like an LLM that has no context for what you're telling it, this is a version of the 90s built from bits and pieces that may or may not belong. I'm not sure if it was deliberate or not, but it adds another layer of depth and now that I've thought about it, I kind of love it.
- I liked how the scientists were tied in. As mentioned, I found that bit tedious in the shorts. I understand that it's important that it exists and all the back story etc but to me that was the least interesting part. Here it was much more condensed and coherent. We got just enough info, and opened the door for all sorts of further Backrooms adventures. I would not be opposed to exploring more psychological trauma in other areas.
- And of course the ending. We're left with more questions than answers. We wonder if any of this was real. Do the Backrooms really exist, or was this all in Mary's head? It's impossible to know. And that's as it should be.
TLDR: This movie is not thrill a minute, it's not even very stressful. Instead, it ends up being a descent into the labyrinths we build in our own heads, and the monsters we make of the worst parts of ourselves. The only way out is through. There is no Exit, but you can always move Forward. Keep walking. You'll get there eventually. <3
Demon Swap: Sebastian from "Black Butler" and Lord Sullivan from "Welcome to Demon School Iruma-Kun!"
Imagine if you will, a Ciel who makes his deal with Lord Sullivan, but Sullivan does not require a soul, instead requesting that Ciel become his grandson. This has to be the easiest deal a human has ever struck with a demon, but oh, how mistaken that was.
Ponder perhaps, an Iruma who's soul is sold by his parents to the starving demon Sebastian, only for Sebastian to find, he'd like instead to refine this soul before devouring it, afterall he is a demon a finer tastes, and thus the Butler persona is born.
Ciel returns home with an... estranged relative(?) eager to take Gaurdianship over the newly orphaned earl
Iruma is taken to the demon realm, suddenly placed upon the lap of luxury, with a loyal butler pleased to do whatever he says- only Iruma has no clue what he even wants
Is Ciel safe- Oh yes, definitely, Lord Sullivan is formitable force when he wants to be, and he will tear apart anyone who dares attempt to hurt his grandbaby, and what's more is more than willing to do anything he asks as per their agreement. But oh, oh how Ciel often replays the events of that terrible day, and wishes he perhaps negotiated for different terms for their contract...
Ciel, tries to solve a murder, as Sullivan Fawns in the background ("Oh my goodness look how cute my grandson is!!! He's doing such a good job, don't you think Opera?? I should find him a little detective's outfit, he'd be just precious!!!!!" "NO!")
Iruma meanwhile is far too aware of the fact that he's just glorified wagyu, but you know what? This might as well be how his miserable life ends, he could enjoy it... he supposes... just has to learn how to enjoy things. Thankfully Sebastian is one hell of a butler and knows just what Iruma wants right when he needs it
and of course he helps out behind the scenes at every chance he gets, he's not going to let his snack be discovered by the rest of demon kind afterall. Sometimes not even behind the scenes, school rules be damned, any butler worth his salt goes wherever his master does. Professor Kalego hates him
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