Review of Backrooms (Movie)
Backrooms director Kane Parsons with actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Clark.
Hello readers. The Backrooms movie is out, and I for one enjoyed it very much. I want to talk about it in this post as well as give my honest review.
First, a warning: I switch between talking about the Backrooms movie and Kane’s YouTube series and I am also long-winded so be prepared for that.
For one, I would like to say that the movie leans heavily into memory, so the theory I made about the movie before its release was partially correct. The movie did not, however, have any black bacteria creatures, at least not any visible ones.
It bothered me a little that the bacteria creatures were not in the movie, but I also understand that they would have come quite out of left field with the way the plot flowed.
That being said, the “monsters” in Backrooms are copies of people from the real world that the Backrooms makes. Similarly, there is a creature in “Backrooms - Found Footage #3” on KanePixels’ YouTube channel that also seems to be a copy of a person. For reference, the creature I am talking about appears at 27:23.
It was nice to see that Kane explored the idea that if the Backrooms can make copies of places, it can make copies of people. Since I am basing this entire theory/review of the movie off of the assumption that the movie is about memory, I think the “people” in the Backrooms are a conglomeration of everyone’s memory of the real world person the Backrooms copies.
What I don’t understand is where all of the people are if the Backrooms makes copies. While I understand that the Backrooms goes on for infinity, there are a lot of people who exist on earth, so why aren’t there more “people” in the Backrooms.
My first thought was that the Backrooms only makes copies of people who have no-clipped in and therefore the Backrooms has “seen” that person in order to make a copy of them. The reason I believed this was because the movie showed copies of both Clark and Mary with only a few other “people.”
Then, I realized that the woman who chases Clark in the Christmas tree scene is probably a copy of his ex-wife, Barbara. The only reason I say “probably” is because it’s never outright confirmed, but the way Clark looks at her makes me think it is her copy.
That being said, the detail that there is a copy of Barbara leads me to believe that people do not have to fall into the Backrooms for there to be a copy of them because the Backrooms exists purely because of peoples’ memories.
So, again, where is everybody? My second guess is that Async did something to the copies of people. It did appear that Clark’s copy was being taken care of in a hospital bed at the end of the movie, but why was Async trying to heal him? Is it for experimentation? The answer still is beyond me.
For a brief moment, I wondered if Async had created some of these “people” themselves to patrol the Backrooms, but they have cameras and cardboard cavemen for that.
Speaking of Async, why did Kane choose to make them a former MRI company? Kane himself said he does not like to have arbitrary details in his works, so he intentionally chose to make Async an MRI company. I guess it’s because an MRI machine would have the means to scan somebody’s brain, you know, where memories form. The irony was not lost on me.
I also want to touch on how the Backrooms spawned out of liminal spaces, which are a Millennial, Gen Z, and even a Gen Alpha phenomenon. Due to this fact alone, liminal spaces, and therefore, the Backrooms, look like spaces that these generations remember from their youth, like an indoor swimming pool or the mall.
Clark says that the Backrooms are every place that has ever existed, which may be true, but most, if not all of what we have seen of the Backrooms so far follow the aesthetics of the 1980s-early 2000s.
If the Backrooms are truly every place that have ever existed, then it would make sense that we would eventually see a Victorian mansion or a cave with the Chauvet paintings or something. I am totally open to Kane taking the Backrooms in this direction, leaning into anemoia, or nostalgia for a time you never lived through.
However, I already have an explanation as to why we have only seen 1980s-early 2000s liminal spaces in the Backrooms outside of the liminal space phenomenon in the real world. Keep in mind that in Kane’s YouTube series, Async only makes first contact with the Backrooms on October 17, 1989.
Kane made it clear that Async did not create the Backrooms, but rather discovered them. When the Backrooms were created is knowledge we do not have, and we may never know. However, my fiancé and I were talking and he said that maybe the Backrooms have always existed, but once humans made contact with it, memories started loading in like a Minecraft world.
This explains perfectly the aesthetic choices of the Backrooms beyond being purely liminal space imagery. Furthermore, we know that our brains are constantly filling in gaps to create meaning. The Backrooms are a literal physical gap just waiting to be filled in once humans first made contact with it.
The characters in the found footage videos on Kane’s YouTube series, though confused by the seemingly random segmentation of the Backrooms and the not-quite-right furnishings, they ultimately find a place that is familiar because they took part in filling it in together.
Some of the visuals in Kane’s YouTube series show the sky reflecting in on itself, showing how the Backrooms are a reflection of our world. The uncanniness of the Backrooms comes from the clashing of multiple streams of consciousness and memories. If it is a collection of human memories and therefore a distorted reflection of humanity, then no one person’s memories overtake another’s.
In Clark’s case, his copy is in his pirate costume and he is a big, tall figure. Clark sees himself as a provider, the “big man” of the house who works to keep the lights on. Barbara sees him as an angry, hulking man who only wants to play the victim. This is why Barbara’s copy runs away when she senses Clark’s copy is nearby, a reflection of how Barbara divorced Clark to get away from him in the real world.
Lastly, I want to say that I hate how people are not giving this movie the credit it deserves. People are saying this movie isn’t perfect for the same reason my English professors didn’t give me 100% on any of the assignments I did in college. They never gave me a concrete reason why, just said vague things like “there was room to improve.”
I have had enough of the random complaints saying that it’s not scary or that the psychological portion of the movie is boring. The psychological part of the movie signals to me that the movie acknowledges how people interact with liminal spaces, which is what made the Backrooms popular in the first place.
Another thing I hear about the movie is that the characters aren’t giving us the whole story of the Backrooms, and to that I say DUH! I think Clark had a pretty good handle on what the Backrooms are, but he obviously can’t know everything because the Backrooms are a space that does not make sense. Trying to make sense of the nonsensical is like describing a dog to someone who has never seen a dog and asking them to draw it.
Meanwhile, bored and out-of-touch Hollywood keeps making Biopics, live action remakes, and sequels and prequels galore. And people pay hard-earned money to see this garbage What’s the next Star Wars movie going to be? Palpatine coming back to life again? Stop beating these dead horses.
Finally, Backrooms provides audiences something new and interesting, but people can’t ever be happy enough with with an actually good movie directed by someone who hasn’t been beaten down by years working in the industry and therefore, has some creative agency. Hint hint, Backrooms isn’t concerned with what will “sell,” it is concerned with holding up a mirror to humanity and asking us to look at ourselves.
So yeah, I think Backrooms is all that and a bag of chips. I was genuinely entertained by the movie, and although it took me a little time and a lot of watching YouTube video breakdowns of the movie to figure out what was happening, I think I understand better what direction Kane is taking the Backrooms as a series, and it’s awesome.
I even enjoyed watching the move in the theaters amongst a bunch of kids who I expected to be really annoying throughout the movie. I was pleasantly surprised when they started applauding and cheering after the introduction scene. The genuine excitement that filled the theater was nice to be part of. I felt like this is what watching a movie in the theater should be like all the time.
One of the kids even said “Guys, the exit disappeared!” after the movie was over. It was funny, and I appreciated that the people in the theater with me were just as immersed in the experience as I was.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading this. If you haven’t seen Backrooms, I highly recommend you watch it and don’t try to over-analyze it. Just appreciate it for what it is. Oh, and look out for the references to another KanePixels YouTube series, The Oldest View. You’ll be glad you did.