the breaker light switches existing and not working at first is realizing there’s something wrong with you.
They don’t do anything at first, cause maybe it’s just a weird feature. Then the lights turn on by themselves. It interrupts your life. They actually do something, and you aren’t in control of it.
After Clark turns off the lights, he finds the backrooms.
the lights flickering -> the electrician finding the weird breaker switches, and them not doing anything in the moment -> the lights turning on randomly, only getting turned off by Clark messing w the weird breaker switches -> Clark noticing the light sliver -> him getting tangled further and further into the backrooms
The store = Clark’s life
Below part of the store = worse parts of Clark’s life
the backrooms = deeper suppressed parts that eventually consume clark
the electrician I think is comparable to Mary because he found the weird breaker switches, like how Mary found a worse part of Clark in their therapy session. Once he messed with it, it started doing something
I do think Clark does qualify as accidentally really good NPD representation but know I say that as a narc who saw a lot of his worst tendacies in Clark as well as related to his excitement over finally finding a place that caters to him before accepting he has to let it go, only for a literal manifestation of his ego to kill him (us when the disorder is disordering).
I do think Clark does qualify as accidentally really good NPD representation but know I say that as a narc who saw a lot of his worst tendacies in Clark as well as related to his excitement over finally finding a place that caters to him before accepting he has to let it go, only for a literal manifestation of his ego to kill him (us when the disorder is disordering).
so pissed at these racist fucks on tumblr people really are not exaggerating when they say this site is so fucking white seriously we have a really good horror movie with a black protagonist who is nuanced and interesting and a DAMN GOOD actor and everyone’s thirsting over the white twink who has 10 minutes of screen time. posts about the PROTAGONIST are getting less interactions than a picture of the white guy shirtless with “oh my god he’s soooooo cuteeee!” ARE YOU INSANE . no you’re just racist.
For a little I felt like we missed Clark’s spiral and that’s why the change felt so sudden but in the same scene that Clark shows this “sudden” violent part of himself he says ‘I don’t want to change’.
Clark has always been like this. We saw his extreme anger at the start of the movie. His disregard for those around him with how he speaks to and about them. The implied breaking of the glass was that he threw it, not knocked it over.
I was expecting a spiral but he didn’t need one. He was already there.
This is gonna be long, i have never had so many thoughts abt a movie. Tldr: the backrooms is about how trauma and mental illness can trap people, and i wanted to look at that from an anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchy angle. Warning for minor to major spoilers!
I fucking loved the backrooms because of how complicated and human both clark and mary are. As mary says in the beginning, while he isnt handling it well, clark’s anger at his situation is completely normal. The way he acts in therapy is perfectly normal and helpful for working through his emotions (i love the way therapy is portrayed in this movie). He’s overworked and stressed and feels under appreciated by everyone around him, especially his wife, and it’s best to get that anger out in a controlled environment where it can be examined and worked through. But due to his unwillingness to change and entitlement that he should be able to do whatever he wants because he’s the only one financially supporting his family (at the moment), all while having seemingly no other support system than his therapist (who is not the best at her job tbh), he instead makes things worse and his mental health spirals. The situation he’s in isnt entirely his fault, but the way he’s handling it is.
To me it seemed pretty clear that mary has some connection with the backrooms prior to where the movie begins, or at least her situation as a child mirrored the backrooms. When clark brings it up she’s not able to compartmentalize how it makes her feel—it’s like it triggered something in her. That, combined with the scene where we descend through mary’s house and it gradually becomes more and more abstracted, makes me think that the backrooms are a pretty direct representation of her trauma, which she clearly has not worked through and which clark is unintentionally making resurface. I think her intentionally going into the backrooms is her trying, and ultimately failing, to confront and work through her trauma.
So with all that said, I like trying to find the root of issues when it comes to things like mental health, and in this case I think the root of both clark and mary’s issues is the patriarchal, capitalist society they live in. Clark is expected to hold up an entire household on his own because thats what men are supposed to do. Hes supposed to be a stoic supporter for his wife, who is supposed to wait on him hand and foot when he comes home after a long day of work. But that isnt whats happening. His wife being in law school means she literally does not have time to take care of him, much less hold down a job. Even though we never see clark’s wife, we can assume that she expects him to fulfill his end of this patriarchal ideal as well without complaint, which he obviously does not do due to how insanely stressed out he is. It’s hard to act “normal” when you feel like everything is falling apart around you. She understandably, given that it’s kinda implied that he threw it, kicks him out after he breaks a glass. But given that clark pays for the house it’s also understandable that he’s upset about this.
Mary is a mediocre-to-not-very-good therapist. She clearly hasnt been able to work through her issues and may also be financially struggling, though probably not as much as clark. She doesnt seem to be out for money and nothing else, so the fact that she’s published this self help-esque audiobook points to her needing the extra income (self-help media is not an adequate replacement for therapy given that therapy is a highly personal thing, so self help books marketed as a universal solution are deceptive at best and exploitative of struggling people at worst).
Psychology, as an institution, is very flawed even if youre seeing the best, most experienced therapist in the world. It tackles the issues inside your mind and therefore isn’t great at addressing material issues like finances and even can contribute to financial strain—it can help you manage your stress and anxiety, sure, but it cant fix your material situation. Honestly I think part of this is by design. Psychology is operating in a capitalist society and it’s pitched as a Universal Fix for your problems, so if you go to therapy and you still have issues? Well, it cant possibly be society, so it must be you, the individual. Maybe youre just not trying hard enough, or youre doing something wrong.
I wanna make it clear that it wasnt mary’s job to “fix” clark, as that isnt what therapy is about. It’s about guiding you and giving you tools to work through your problems alongside someone who can offer valuable insight into what’s going on in your mind. If the patient doesnt want to put in the work, and/or the therapist isnt effectively supporting them, they wont get better, which is exactly what happens with clark and mary. It’s a failure on both ends. Clark is unwilling to change, and mary is unable to compartmentalize her trauma in order to do her job. This all culminates in the “dinner” scene. Clark allows himself to literally be consumed by the image he has of himself. Mary then tries to outrun that image, which I think represents her trauma, and almost escapes—until the final scene. She comes to believe that she’ll never be able to escape the backrooms—her trauma—and gives in, which is what I think the distorted mary at the end represents. She sees herself as trapped yet again and cant fathom escaping.
In the end, if both of these people had adequately been supported by their families, communities, and society at large, they likely would never have found the backrooms or even met in the first place. The expectations of capitalism and patriarchy (that men are stoic providers that women must wait on hand and foot, and that one person is enough to provide for entire household, and that mental health is a purely individual issue) was what doomed them before the movie even began.
Aaand i think im done! I love seeing analysis of this movie and Im really curious if anyone has wrote about this from a Black perspective. I feel like theres things to be said about Black men and mental health, especially given that (seemingly) two of the main women in clark’s life are white. I think theres some criticism warranted as well irt deformed faces being used as body horror, so Id be interested to hear abt that as well
The backrooms are a failing brain trying to hold onto even the most basic of memories, even as they warp and decay.
The backrooms are generative AI trying to capture something real but only achieving a malformed, mindless imitation.
The backrooms are stagnation, an unwillingness to step into the new and uncomfortable effort of changing, instead running through the same old routine even as it starts to fall in on itself.
The backrooms are nostalgia cannibalizing itself, trying to remake and remake what it already knows without making anything new, until the familiar is so bastardized it's barely recognizable.
Anyway i love how the movie uses this very abstract out-there horror premise to represent the human tendency to get stuck on something and obsess over it and become trapped in a never-ending cycle and to resist change so hard that you still change anyway but in a way that degrades and warps and destroys you and the fallibility of human memory and how every time you recall something it gets a little less accurate which means the more you obsess over something the further entrenched in it you become the more you choose to live here the worse it gets the less you understand it until your perspective on the objective reality of it is completely destroyed. The backrooms are a brain the whole thing is a brain. The horror is the human brain. CAN ANYBODY HEAR MEEEEE
a handprint made in concrete is just the image of a hand, it’s not the real thing. or, it’s the absence of a hand, more than anything, the negative space. the casing around where it should be. it’s an indent that was made from something real - that could not have existed without something real - but it’s not the real thing, it’s just trying to be. maybe it’s not even trying. you put your hand there with your mother and the concrete remembers, and the handprint doesn’t even know why it exists, it just does. if we can make copies and not-things from real things in the world, who’s the say the world couldn’t do that itself? does it even need to know why?
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