the backrooms movie made me realize that my deepest fear isn't monsters or labyrinths or even death. it's failure.
seeing clark divorced, struggling with money, no friends, sitting and drinking and festering in his own self pity brought tears to my eyes faster than anything ever had before.
I saw him out of breath hopping around on the peg leg with the pirate impression talking about how you don't even need credit to buy from him and I was so close to sobbing it wasn't even funny. putting on a face when you're breaking down inside with no hope is terrifying to me.
I was so sad during the kitchen table scene because everything Mary said was true, he was lost now. It's like seeing someone you wished would succeed just give up and fall asleep in their grave.
Clark is gonna stick with me for a long time.
This. Clark's character is so very tragic to me. It's a powerful example of learned helplessness gone haywire. I think it's one of the most effective cautionary tales because *so many* people could very easily turn out like him.
Clark truly felt helpless in life, and as a result, he would continuously find blame in external factors. This gave him a false sense of control, without realizing that doing this only fed into the cycle of him being perpetually stuck in life.
He desperately wanted agency over his life, yet he feared the uncertainty that comes with that agency. He felt trapped by the various circumstances, but in reality, he was the one trapping himself by remaining stagnant.
Clark is a deeply flawed person. The role-play scenes make this very clear. His behavior is destructive towards his wellbeing, it hurts those around him, and he only falls further down into his ways (it's just the way he's "wired", as he claimed). It's a downward spiral.
And in the end, when it came to the choice to change... he rejected it. This unhealthy coping mechanism of his... it feels safe, it feels familiar, and it makes him *feel* in control... and when Clark finally made that decision to continue this cycle... that decision ate him alive... literally.
---
Back to the original post, yeah... this was also the scariest part of the movie to me. It's a very uncomfortable wake-up call, and I'm sure a lot of people feel hesitant to admit that they see parts of themselves in Clark's character. It doesn't feel pleasant to see it so vividly, but that's the significance of the story. It shows one of the worst outcomes of what could happen to someone's life if they let feelings of learned helplessness take over.
