Final Thoughts and Recommendations

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With the lowest prices, it's easy to stock up for whatever the weekend brings, and I can get everything I need in one stop. Shop total wine and more and get ready for your next summer party. Spirits not sold in Virginia, North Carolina, drink responsibly, be twenty one You're listening to Nightmare on Film Street Ournt time is six sixty six. Traffic is clear ahead from here to the afterlife. But it's hell outside So let's give a grave, welcome too our hosts, John and Kim Hello again, Fies, and welcome to Nightm on Film Street cast for the casually obsessed. I'm Kimmy John And this week we are doing a drivew drive in from back rooms. From back rooms? From back rooms. Live in the back room. On back rooms. This is what Okay, on back rooms. We're good Oh God B rooms. Sorry Yeah, the viral internet Creepy pasta has really taken a hold of a generation The excitement and the fervor for back rooms is something that I don't get. It's just it just passed me by, you know, like I'm starting to feel like I'm at that age You're just being an old Cmudgian. I'm not a I'm just saying that it just didn'tbe I didn't vibe with it the way everybody else did. Yeah, I didn't get into it either. I'm also a Cmudgon. I just yeah, I don't know M I feel like creepy pastas in general I wasn't I didn't catch on to. It's a thing that shouldn't be. but I like the idea of them. I just I haven't ever gone into the And dipped a toe in the pool, so to speak. There's there's some good creepy pastas. The other problem too is I know this is going on Yeah, but have you consumed them all through like channel zero a media that you're more comfortable with? That's what I mean, is that? Okay. I don't know. There's some text based creepy pastas that I've read on Reddit that I thought were pretty fun. I mean, there's the classic Russian sleep experiment. That one's always a good one, but that's a very, very early one Creepy pasta has gone in a weird direction. and yeah, my familiarity with them is always gonna be through movies, through adaptations. like the Slender Man movie. The channel Zero TV show, and then everything else that sort of feels like it's a creepy pasta, which is a lot of what horror is now. Backrooms Classic internet creepy pasta that is finally getting the feature treatment. I think we heard about this movie years. Finally is. And in terms of film time inaccurate because before we started recording this, we took a peek at some of the short films because we were unfamiliar with them And they were from four years ago. It was only was it four years ago? Four years ago. Fes like it was a long time. I feel like I've been not waiting. Also, the filmmaker is like twenty Yeah, he was making this in the crib. I think they worked pretty quickly. Okay, point is it feels like it feels like I heard about this feature film years and years ago. and yeah, movies take a long time to make. Don't get me wrong. but at some point I just thought, oh, I guess they're not making that movie. I guess it's just not happening. but here it is now and I didn't give it a second thought until the trailer came out. and completely changed my tune once I saw what this movie looked like and what it was gonna be like. It felt like this was the House of Leaves film adaptation that I still haven't gotten I alsoso vibed with the trailer a bit. I was like, okay, I might I might be into this. I don't know what it was about the trailer U hadad a good t Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Had good sound design It's the camera lens. I'm telling you that it's all in the lens choice of the film because it just feels so strange. And like it's a different lens package, I'm pretty sure from like when we're in the real world to when we're in the backrooms. and things are just like a little askew in a way that you can't put your finger on, but you know it just feels wrong, right? The way it must feel for a mouse to see a cat or to like to look into the eyes of a cat That's that's kind of, you don't, you don't think like there's a primal fear being in that place Yeah, because it's just like it's it's like you walk onto a spaceship and it It lookooks like real world. Especially when you learn it's like a video game and it's full of creatures. What H. The backrooms are Full of creatures. Oh, you're saying it's like a video game? Yes. Okay I thought there was like some chunk of a movie that I completely missed. I'm like, whoa, did it all get explained? Did I miss everything completely? Okay, the point is, if you have also been on familiar with these movies and you don't understand why everybody is so excited about it. This might be the review for you because we are not back rooms experts. And we went into this mostly with a blank mind not knowing much about the films. I had seen the original short, Kim hadn't So we are probably the best people to tell you whether or not this movie is going be for you if you have no understanding of this cinematic universe that we didn't know existed. Yeah, I'd say that I knew of back rooms and I could probably guess what it was about feel be okay, accurate.. I could do a couple of questions on jeopardy. I'm not getting I'm not doing the daily double on backrops. As somebody who's like you know, been around a horror story or two, I could I could tell you what a liminal space is probably telling you. Yeah Yeah totally. But yeah, so the film itself is think a lot Wieter than I was anticipating I knew going in, it's a liminal space movie. So the sell here is that it's like this weird uncanny valley You know, you're walking through a space that just doesn't make sense. Building portion wise, It's not logically constructed. You're in the Winchester mansion. I was gonna to sayes doors and windows to no wayere. I was good yeah, the Winchester mansion on a spaceship Yeah Yeah, in the fourth dimension, we'll say. Yeah. and especially now watching, you know, through the lens of the post AI. It is deffinitely maybe not intending to say much about AI, but I think it it's a good natural comparison as to like what computers are generating in images and visually and they're going to start be like making movies now. and AI is going to be infiltrated visually into everything we Everything we have consumed and watch, whether we like it or not, because everybody's got their toes in AI and you won't be able to tell the difference soon if you can't already. Copies of copies, hallucinations. Exactly. and the more AI renders things. and also the more we train AI, we're gonna start we're going to be training AI off of AI Because the internet's going to be mostly AI content and then we're going to be scraping that content and then the AI is going be training that. So like the AI iss going to be training on hallucinations of AI. Sweet. And so before we're going to be six halluc hallucinations deep. And then what's the truth anymore? No one knows. And that is the back rooms, I think. Okay That's a theory. That's a wild take. I don't think intentionally, but I think it's a good it's a good fun house mirror our times. that makes sense. Every Everything I watch now I compare to AI just because I know it's coming up for us all. Yeah. and like creators are more bummed out about it and more worried about it than anybody el. It like why can't automate laundry? Why out laundry? Yeah why do we gott to give it the keys to every film possible Why can't we figure out self driving cars before we figure out how to clear your inbox out or something like Ital yet I just I just want the trees to not burn down because it's fifty degrees outside. Let's work on that, AI? Sure Yeah Yeah. I don't want to drive. That's my thing. I'm just like this is an hour that I could have spent doing anything else. Just think of how many like games of cards we could play if we didn't have to drive our own car. And that's all that we would do. We would all take up Rummy. We'd all have to learn how to how to Rummy. And like car rides minimum for people. They say it's for the environment but it's so you can play a good game at Eucher Okay, so backrooms. The concept is pretty simple. You probably already understand it. If you've seen the trailer and you get the point. There is a space that shouldn't exist. A character named Clark who owns a failing furniture store is trying to investigate why his love that furniture store, by the way. It is very fun Pirate themed furniture store. I just love all the furniture. just it looks like my favorite thrift store. Is it Captain Clark's? Yeah. Captain Clark Ottoman empire. But Ottoman speelt like an Ottoman that you would put your feet on. prettytty funny. good stuff. He's trying to figure out why his like one, why the electricity in the building sucks, Wh it's constantly losing power. Is he paying to power in the back room I feel like that would be astonom He keeps saying that his electricity bills are going through the roof. It's got to be wired to like the city though. It's got to be like there's got to be other entrances and other connect other connecting spaces. L it does have to be some kind of underground subway system. U I don't know if it exists in a physical plan and like if you're literally making, you know, six lefts if you're ending up at the corner store So you know what I mean? There might not be a particular roadmap, no, but so yeah he finds this place that shouldn't exist in the basement of the furniture store. He literally like falls through a chunk of the wall and he finds a whole bunch of unused real estate And unlike Justin Long in Barbarian, he doesn't exactly see this as a money making opportunity. He's kindind of terrified And immediately starts trying to investigate it and figure out where it ends, where it leads, and what it's all about. Yeah. The movie doesn't necessarily follow him completely No Linearly though. No. We cut time and stuff. so he's definitely drinking the tea of what this space is very quickly is very obsessed and investigating it And we're not necessarily coming along for the ride? No. I mean, that might be that might have been lost in the editing room. There's a chance that it was never written, that it was never shot. But yeah, there are chunks of his character that we are not really experiencing We are just trying to sort of draw conclusions for ourselves by the end. Yeah, because after he discovers the space, And we go with him like the first time he goes in it We get our first real feel for what the backrooms is and there's, you know boards that don't make sense. there's furniture like upside down and stuck to itself. But it's not that weird. It's just Slightly uncannye killer here. Yeah. Yeah This is very big. these some of these walls are stupid. And then the next time we see him, he's visiting his therapist and he is off the deep end a little bit. Well, you can tell because he also shows her a map that And he he says he's been in it every night since you found it. So he's probably he's really not sleeping. L we know that this guy has a bit of a drinking problem We know that he beats He doesn't living in his store. living in his store that Is it closing down or is It's going be it should be. Yeah. like he hasn't announced it yet, but he is in a flash clearance sale. He is in a going out of business sale. He just doesn't want to. which kind of sucks though, because he's just found an unlimited supply of inventory. Oh, you think he shares are functional. Man, That's a movie, right? where instead like he he finds a bunch of weird art that shouldn't exist And he brings it up and he starts selling bougier pieces. Like he becomes this sort of chic. Yeah, he I was thinking he would just find the functional stuff and sell that. there's that The weird shit would be evener, like half a lamp. Yeah stuff that you would never he pay for that. Yeah, like the two chairs stuck together like o, it says so much. Yeah. and then that's how we that that's I guess how you franchise this out because like now each of those pieces creates an opening to the back So like everybody who's that that's the if it's a TV show like the Friday of the thirteenth show, like you have to go through all the receipts and find everybody who's ever bought anything and you got to go get them to return it to the store. You could do a TV show where every Every episode is just a different perspective. Yeah. It's just somebody else finding a different entrance. Yeah becausecause the entrance possibilities are endless. Very few characters in this movie. So there's Clarark, there's his therapist Mary. She's really his only connection to the outside world. H marriage has fallen apart. hisis relationship. I don't know that he was like fully married or anything. Yeah, I think it was his wife. It was his wife. Yeahah, okay. she's kicked him out of the house because he's And jerk. Yeah. Huge jerk. He's drinking, he's stressed out. He's blaming her for everything. He is just a ball of anger. She is trying to help him work through it. She's got her own shit going on. And other than that, the only people that he really talks to on a regular basis are the employees at his furniture store. Yeah, which just he's got two employees. Yeah. Or he's got an employee and her boyfriend comes sometimes. Yeah to be a videographer. He ropes them in to help him explore the back rooms think, you know, trying to get to like the harder to reach places that he can't really get on his own safely That's where it all. And I also think he wanted evidence. like he wanted video footage. Yeah basasically show his therapist 'cause she didn't believe him. Yeah, we should say it's set in nineteen ninety, right? nineteen ninety ninety. It looks like nineteen ninety. Yeah Everybody's got old ass computers. There's not a cell phone in sight. Yeah. all of the patterns are like a dixie c Yes. And so yeah, he needs access to a camera. It's not as easy to just like whip out your phone and start video recording everything. He encounters a bunch of weird stuff in the backrooms, including evidence that other people have been there. So like, yeah, of course, it's weird when we see all the furniture. It's weird when we hear a noise down a hallway or when there's just like a window at an impossible or stupid height somewhere on a wall There are these sort of cardboard cutouts of a caveman. Yeah that are just talking like cycling through languages. There is a camera usually affixed to a wall right by it. and also more importantly, like direct power leading from that cardboard cutout through a wall somewhere else You know, like clearly somebody has installed this here for a purpose, but we don't know who did it Mhm. Also Birds Oh yeah, sure. There are birds. Yeah, ye And all of that to say that there is a cold open in the movie that sort of follows somebody else who is exploring the backrooms. And I really enjoyed that cold open It has a more found footage feel than a lot of the rest of the movie, which makes sense given the origin of this franchise and where it came from because it is more of a found footage short film. Well, there's a hundred percent, like you saying franchise Definitely the studio to life in feature format was like, oh, we can make a thousand of these. Yeah, that and like we could we should also try and retain some of what people loved about those original shorts. just tell them nothing. Tell them absolutely. And if we can get away with telling them even less than we have before, we'll give them two hours of content, but they will come away with More answers than they had before they sat down. that would be ideal. That's the A twenty four model And they nailed it. they knocked that objective out of the park. I do feel like I came away with like a lot of questions, some answers, not to the questions I had. No, but no answers as to like what is the back rooms and why. Yeah I left with new questions and what a gift that is. Oh, thank you so much for that Always my favorite thing to get when I leave a movie Corevadazzona Is that a word? In the twenty twenty six Kyiaportage Turbo hybrid, it might as well be, because it can be one road trip It's all about turbocharged power and hybrid efficiency working together. So you get the thrill of quick acceleration and the satisfaction of fuel efficiency. Book a test drive and keep the adventure going Kia, movement that inspires Call eight hundred three three three four Kiaot details. Always drive safely. Okay so without like Boiling it. sure How do you how do you feel about How do I feel about it? How do you feel about it? So you're asking me like whether I recommend before we get into spoilers. I feel is a weird question because like I have theories But I'd love to talk about it. Okay, well, like I'm asking, you kind of had a bit of hype going into it. Yeah, I was looking forward to it. Do you feel like it lived up to the hype? I thought it was okay. I thought it was pretty okay. Okay. What a good little movie that I you know, was not necessarily because I feel pretty indifferent to it. Yeah, I mean it's not Perfect. I had wanted a little more. Yeah. 'cause I love a weird. I love I love a little weird. Oh yeah there's plenty of a little weird of it. Yeah, it's got a little it's got some little weird. It's got a little weird I don't. Yeah I don't know. It's a hard it's a hard it's one. It's a hard movie to talk about without getting into spoilers. So if you don't want us to spoil anything, you're safe here for a couple minutes but we're going to have to start getting into the trenches on this one to really narrow in on how we feel about it and what the fuck it's about. Okay so here you' got some fun stuff. here's Okay, so this is this is the thing is was it fun Okay, fun is maybe not the right word. It's got some spooky stuff. It's got some stuff. And that's what I'm looking for That's what I'm looking for in a horror movie. I just want some spooky stuff. ye I I don't know how I feel about it yet and this is terrible because I'm recording a review of it right now.. This is well, I mean, it helps This is the experience of watching this movie. And if you would all too would like to live through this, go see it in the movie theater right now A I'm gonna say that this is your thirty second warning before we start getting into spoilers, but this is what it feels like to watch a movie like this And some people love It's not one hundred percent hour bag. Yeah. maybe it's the office space vibe, like it's like There's something boring about. Yeah. And I'm intentionally boring. And I'm like, is that rubbing off on how I feel about because so the thing that got me excited to watch it not being a back rooms person was that the trailer really sold me into this like this impossible otherworldly nness of it. Yeah. And so I was like, ooh, we're going to get some as above so below stuff. And as above so below is a horror movie that goes into the catacombs under Paris. and it also has this like Are we slowly descending closer to hell? You get this like these impossible things. There's this weird uncanny valley and this eeriness and Um That is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. And it's a ten. And it's so good and it's an adventure movie and you're exploring, but also not a lot of questions are answered. then It's almost like national treasury at times. Yeah. It's really fun. I think an astute view could come away with a lot of answers. And I'm just like, am I just a catacombs girl and not a liminal office girl? Okay, if this movie was just set in the catacombs, that'd be incredible. Like if instead of funky wallpaper, we just had skulls. But I do be one hundred percent better do love the aesthetic. I do love the nineties aesthetic and I think doing a like repetitive liminal space, the nineties is great I Going full carpet. I'm fine with it But I don't know. I just don't know if it's if it does enough. Enough. Yeah. No, I hear you. I'd say where the movie really cooks is the found footage sequences. I think you're right. And I think that's where it starts to be a little bit more as above so below. But I think where it really cooks is when it's doing the investigative stuff where we're having this almost like CSI government cover up almost aspect to it with like the tapes and the footage and o. And that you see a little bit in the cold open, you also get a little bit in the finale. That is where you're like, oh they' there're They're trying to say that the government's aware of this maybe or some kind of entity or official body is aware of this space. And that's interesting. I love that you come away thinking that it's an official body. and like they are definitely presenting You think it's just a bunch of nerds and coats? I do think it's a bunch of nerds and coat. I don't know ifbe it's bunch of nerds coats, but I defitely think they're employed by the government ds and coats with government money. No, If you remember at the end of the movie, we discovered that they all were Are we on spoilers now? Yeah, o. We are a hundred percent in spoilers. Th heads up guys. full spoiler territory. Don't bother listening if you don't want the rest of the movie ruined, even though the internet has been trying to spoil it for you for a few weeks now. I know like all the beats of the movie were released on Twitter. What What beats are there to spoil Guy goes in wall. Guy goes weird in wall. This is great. This is like what it always feels like talking to me about liminal space movies because frankly, I have been complaining about Liminal space movies for what feels like a decade. Name another Liminal space movie. I can name a bunch. Okay. I'm gonna to name them to me becausecause I'm making list post for for Instagram. I'll give ' them to you later. I don I don't want tona start by saying I hate these movies and then list a bunch of indie filmmakers movies that I didn't like. All right, well this post coming's All you gott to do if you're attending a film festival in the last ten years, there's a lot of liminal spac shit and it's not really my bag. it's not really one hundred percent for me. But the characters at the end of this movie who are essentially like the nerds, the scientist nerds who maybe work for the government. They worked for an MRI manufacturer. Oh yeah. They made MRIs until So that's why where I discovered this area. That One of the only things that I really enjoyed about the movie because MRIs map the brain and The backrooms are essentially like a giant brain because it's it's a memory. Oh man, how we how do we get there? And yeah, that's all that's that's what that's what the backrooms are. Its It's a big collective brain. Yeah. So the more you access memories, the more incorrect they are, which is true about memories. Okay. yeah, we're making we're making a lot of jumps, but yeah, we have a lot of sequences in the movie where characters are encountering things from their lives that shouldn't be in the backrooms. You know, like, oh, this is a shirt that I've worn before. Why is it here in this giant trash heap of a bunch of other people's shirts covered in blood? Why are chairs that I own here repeating in you know, like off to infinity. thingsings that should not be there are there from your personal life. My My My problem with that And the thing that I don't really like about that, is that it's basically saying like it's a collective universe in there, like this fun house mirror ass backwards twisted universe. The size of it, you wouldn't ever come upon your own things Okay There's a moment like where we're seeing flashbacks of the doctor's past and kind of her for hang upps. And when she visits her mom in the facility that she's in definitely for mental health issues, the siding trim in the mental health facility is very similar to the siding trim that is used weirdly in the back rooms. And that I like. I did not see The back rooms was a generation of this space. like if it was this only here, it only looks like this for these people that it knows are going to go into it. If it was only of the furniture store, like that explains why there is weird furniture Yeah because it is It is off a furniture store. a furniture store owner is going to be the mind that process it like, you know, tree falls in the woods. Yes kind of like do you hear it? And it's and it's making the sound for a guy that owns a furniture store? Yeah, so it's it's definitely absorbing people and absorbing their memories. And you're right, The reason that there would be so much furniture is because it has absorbed more of him than of other people Now there's plenty of furniture in there before he even ventures in for the first time. And because even in the cold open, the guy doing the shaky cam foundound footage, he sees a sign, a no credit sign, which is the sign from the store. Yep, yeep yeep. And that character hasn't yet discovered the back room. Hasn't gotone in there yet, but it's within the same facility I mean, it's starting to sort of like bleed into our world as well. likeike they find like some weird stuff on the breaker panel. There's clearly more of it the longer that Clarark is in the backrooms I think like our own universe, the backrooms is probably just continuing to expand. especially and probably at a faster rate when there's more people in. Do you think it's like a reverse black hole Probably, yeah. It's Undefinable by nature is kind of the idea, but like if we want to play around with some theories of what it could be, it could be a reverse black hole. likeike a large Hadron collllider problem where something went online that shouldn't have. I don't know what the MRI company was doing, but like I don't know, they surged the breaker. They had some weird sort of meltdown and now they have this portal that they're exploring I think the most L a Henriett a Lack situation. Sure. Yeah Yeah, you if you haven't heard about Henry Hadelax, Google that.'s that's a rabbit hole. They're still using her skin today Yes, they sure are. I think the more people go into it, the faster it expands and like the more that it will have repetition because like there is not a perfect recreation of the furniture store in the beginning of the movie and when Clark first goes in, but there is significantly more and like like a full copy of the furniture store by the end of the film Yeah. at that point, he's kind of moved into the back rooms like he is living there. Yeah So you okay, I guess yeah, I guess it does change because when she comes in, there's no furniture tower at the entrance. like it is moving around. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's even notes that hes scrolleding the wall saying like it's shifted again. you know, like it's like you can't rely on any sort of mapping because it changes all the time. I think it's a frustrating movevie. I think the problem is is that we're starting with a premise. which is just Liminal spaces are weird and uncanny and there's something that feels off about them and that there's something horror here. There's something that makes people innately uncomfortable And then writing a story to that. I agree it's also the other problem with a lot of A twenty four movies where you have a Really great concept. L oh, we got a good vibe here. Yeah, and let's mind that vibe. But then also let's just completely abandon it. halfway w thirds the way through the movie basically, like, write the whole story. Now throw half of it out, let's film. Throw the finale out and then don't bother trying to explore what makes the movie interesting. Let's shift gears and get significantly artsier. Like that is really the A twenty four model is secretly make an art film. The first two thirds of the movie are like any compelling horror movie that you would want to see. And then surprise Rug pull We have a Swedish art film as the finale, and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. Oh man. A lot of times it leaves you wanting more. We stayed through the credits because they didn't turn the lights on. so we were like, okay, maybe there's something. And a bunch of people in our theater did. And then when it just cut to the A twenty four logo and then like the lights came up, a guy in the theater was just like, what That's it, There's no ending. There's just no ending, huh? Yeah My favorite moment And brought is like six kids with him. Yeah, yeah, There were a so many kids in the theater. Kids that were way too young for some of the sequences of the movie. I don't I don't understand the back rooms. they're not gonna. What if they what if they understand it? Like what if they're like locked in and they get it Kids watch a lot of YouTube. They're just like ye Yeah, no this is totally a place where like all of your trauma goes to live. Like if it affects you this much in the real world and there has to be a place where it lives This the bedrooms. you're like, wow, kid, damn. I definitely felt like when he brought his employee and her boyfriend or whatever as the videographer, I definitely felt like when he went down that weird shoute, we were in the lair of the captain. like those shirts were all him eating people or whatever. Yeah Yeah It smelled bad down there. It was like grrimy and yeah Yeah, it definitely felt like a cave. The other great sequence of the movie. And again, it's because we're found footage at this point. We've got a video stuff is happening. Stuff is happening. You know, that's one of my favorite things for movies to do. I love it when movies do things. And we got some things in this sequence. And yeah,s it all kind of happens off camera. You don't see it perfectly like found footage should be But it's like just enough to know they that like, oh, fuck something's wrong here and it's getting spooky and people are dying. Like the kid gets dragged away and there's just like a whole pile of blood going to a door that's sideways on a wall that shouldn't exist. And there's a lot of threat happening here But we time jump again after this. you know, like we have a moment where Clarark puts the camera down. Unclear why he even picks it up in the first place, but whatever, it's a horror movie. I'm gonna to buy it And then while he's trying to sort of figure out how Kat is stuck behind a wall, we see something pick the camera up and the camera lifts up to the basically the ceiling. So clearly whatever's holding it is really fucking tall And then we cut away And that's kind of that's kind of like the last big horrory moment of the movie we have. And a lot of the movie is in chapters in the sense that like scenes end and then we time jump or we go to a different character and there's a lot of like hard cuts in the story of of the movie, which I guess interrupts the flow, I think. A little bit It kind of gives you that episodic feel though that like the backroom's stories are. so I can see why they maybe did it that way. It seems a little more in line with the I'll call it a web series, but yeah, you you built up all this tension and I was like, o man I can't wait to see where we go from here. And we just sort of like roll back to the beginning and start over again with a new character I would say that Mary's sequence is interesting. Clark, I thought was a really good character and then it kind of fell apart for me. There was a moment in this movie where Mary goes looking for Clark in the back room. We just lost a lot of his development to off camera development Yeah. Like time would pass and he would be more erratic and he was making these huge leaps and bounds and we just weren't privy to them. I mean which can be fine Yeah, but I just I feel like there was a lot of chaos that I would have liked to have seen Yeah, I mean, I'm happy sometimes when we skip shit that is just sort of boilerplate. like I've seen this a million times. likeike, yeah, of course he's getting more obsessed with it. The more time he spends in there, the less time he's sleeping. There's no answers. yadta. But like there are interesting ways to do that And the jump to like figuring out you can eat them. So that is the other fun thing. So there are a lot of people in this. Mary goes into the backrooms to find Clark And she does find him, but he is completely off the deep end. Yeah. He knocks her out, he ties her up, He gives her a big monologue speech about what the backrooms is and like a kitchen with no windows. Yeah. it's very str. And there are some characters there. He's got roommates. Yeah. And like Kim mentioned, he learns that you can eat them Ln M madeade of rice almost. Yeah. Like he just like grabs a midful and puts it on her plate. and yeah, it looks like rice. They look like or it's like sushi rice. Yeah. It's sticky rice. and I don't know how he figured that one out, but hes also says like they don't feel any pain because he just stabs one of them in the neck and nothing happens. You know, you would learn that by trying to defend yourself that it doesn't necessarily do anything It seems like he's also meeting copies of himself in there Beause he mentions like hearing something. Oh no, it's because the giant fucking monster. Is it' just a giant copy of him. That's what it is. Yeah. there was when we were in that moment, like in the big monologue where he's sort of explaining, like the kind of thing you would get at the end of a movie, frankly, it's the end of his story because he dies. A lot of the things she says feel like the beginning and end of the movie monologues like she says a lot about loops and stuff and you're just like, ye. Yeah, but creating neural pathways and like going with the path of least resistance how your brain will essentially do things like that. Unfortunately I didn't write it up down. but it's like opening dialogue of the movie. It's sort of like a thesis statement. And he repeats it to her. He does repeat. Well, I think it's because it's a core of her book. You know, she's got a bit of a she's got an audio book and a program that he's sel. Yes, exactly It was when we were in that moment that I was like, Damn, I really wish the movie was doing something more here. We have this incredible space and this awesome premise But like we've kind of reduced it down to just like dealing with the mental health of this one guy. I just feel I felt like such a small story for such a big opportunity. And like that's storytelling, you know, L you take a big giant concept and you boil it down into a single person, like something relatable. seemeems I thought watching the movie that we weren't doing enough with what we have. Okay, it's hard too because you don't want to overte the line. Because there are a lot of expectations in terms of like what the backrooms are and you cannot over explain them. Sure. Like I think they was that. They were really trying to like, okay, we need to make this palatable for general audiences so that they feel like but so they feel like there's a story here. Sure and there's a plot They're getting a hint at what the backrooms are. Yes, but that we were're not over showing what they are because like it's an open source thing. like I don't own the back rooms, I don't own what they are. So I can't concretely be like No, it's this and that's it I don't know Surely you can. Why can't you? And I think but the whole the whole thing is that it's elusive and you're not supposed to know So I can I can understand that. I just think you're right in that I don't know if we know The character well enough for his choices and his behavior in the backrooms and like his descent into madness where when he decides he's like, you know what I think I'm going to stay here and then the theraist was like, okay so Yeah stay stay here. No big deal. I feel like I should have really enjoyed that. but I was just like That's an interesting choice. I wish I knew Wh he was making we didn't we m some b scary back here and he's not really scared anymore. No. This is the one place you would not want to stay forever and he' happy to h. And when he's confronted, so his his giant version of himself who is like the pirate captain, but almost like a cllaymation version. es in and he's like what are you doing in here? Yeah. You're not supposed to be this is my kitchen. We have an agreement kind of thing. Like he's more just like, what are you doing? Yeah. I'm breaking the rules. I'm having a meeting with that's my therapist or she's going.. And then he like eats them and he's dead and you're like, wait though, I need to understand why he's comfortable here. We haven't even talked about the people that he's hanging out right? Like the people that he's eating like a guy who's got like he's totally normal looking, but he's got three sets of eyes. A woman who's got like five faces on her head veryer creepy looking. I don't necessarily need answers for all that because they feel like a bad copy or an AI hallucination. It totally works. It's very creepy in the space I kind of w place I want to live. I wish there weren't peopleople in there. I wish there weren't creatures, I wish Yeahah, because that's what makes it feel like video gamy for me. Okay. And I see having watched the short that that you know, like the peak of an entity was part of the short. and so that's something that I guess they're trying to carry through. But that's what feels very video gamey. and to me, adding The threat of creatures, the threat of something chasing after you or something living in there and finding you, or many things living in there and finding you makes it less like a liminal space and more like just another ecosystem. Okay, Yeah. I mean, there is a pretty good chance in the way I What makes this any different than Doom? Isn't doom technically like? They open a portal helll spaceship. Yeah It is sort of like It's just another s different We've chosen spaceship Okay creatures. And then this is like we've chosen impossible office building and creatures. Okay, I got you. Yeah. I mean, as soon as you start adding monsters into the mix, then it becomes a little bit more of a survival h. And it'sess cerebral, I guess. Yeah. yeah, yeah, ye, yeah. I mean you know The movie wants to be more cerebral and you know that because the ending gets full cerebral By the end of the film, Mary is trying to escape and she finds a whole bunch of other weirdly impossible areas, including a sort of like bottomless pit of just copies and copies and copies. Like you're seeing the center of a building and the backrooms is being infinitely repeated upwards and downwards. There is no limit to how many rooms it's able to make. She escapes by following a impossible staircase into the ceiling and where she meets up with the MRI team who have been trying to sort of trap things that are in the backrooms. They are trying to map it out themselves. They're doing it with a little bit more resource than Clarark had and they sit her down for an interrogation that ends veryery abruptly. And then the credits roll. Like they want I don't even remember what is like what happens in that scene. Yeah. I mean, they explain very briefly what they're doing And they just want to get a debrief from her of what she saw. And the character played by Mark Duplace is essentially just like, look, this never used to be my job. This is my job now I go in there every day and I write down what I see and I report my findings and I just explore. And the more time that I spend in there, the more that I believe that this is the most important thing and the most important discovery we have ever made. Like they are treating it like they are exploring interstellar space and they're approaching it with as much scientific fervor as you would that And they don't have any fucking answers. So they want her input because like this is just another person who encountered it, who saw other shit And it has found another opening that they didn't even know existed. Like they want They want her to help them find more answers, but she's a little leery about giving them any answers because she doesn't know what's going to happen to her She even asks after I'm done What happens to me? Am I allowed to leave? And he just says like, I don't, it's not a decision that I make M But I would really appreciate if you could help us solve this And there's like, That's it. Yeah. while he continues to talk to her, we fade away to different scenes in the back rooms, including scenes from her life and a sort of backroomsy repeated version of herself sitting in the interrogation chair with like a lot of different styles of face and it's all spooky and then the credits roll. And that's the movie M And how do you think how do you feel about that, Kim Yeah. What do you think It looks very Picasso esque, which like looks cool Yeah. And I think it's it's nice and pointed that if you're to interpret that that is the end of her story and that she died there, and then her life's work is just being repeated in the back rooms like dark The scene is like the penultimate moment of her life and it's just this this vignette in the back rooms of her looking the way she does like a Picasso painting. Yeah. I mean that's fucking st. That's kind of a dark interpretation. But then you also like is this saying anything at all? Yeah. so I mean I got a couple ideas here and one of them was a bit of a throwaway comment from earlier, but like I do genuinely think this might be something that they're playing with about how an emotion that you have that you could if you close your eyes right now, you can picture it. It's right there. It's so close that you can you still know what it feels like and you can touch it That has to live somewhere, right? Like thats that's what it feels like as human beings. Like we can't just imagine that it's a. likeike what if your thoughts are actually you're actually creating something? Yes, exactly. L the Langaliers, you know, the the st. Oh, you love the fuckingali Lo the langaliers guys. Yeah, like I couldn't stop thinking about the langaliersag Fucking seventeen And I don't know, it was like afternoon we'd skip class, we werere all high or something. And someone's like, I got a movie for you guys. You guys Airport meetball. Five hours of airport me Yeah, did you know this was a three night miniseries event They're like what the fuck is this? Yeah turn like pure cinema. Yeah That's what I thought, but other people did not share my opinion One day I'll revisit it with you and I will give it a gosh darn try. I have it on VHS right. I said one day. I did not provide a. Tonight could be the day. Okay, yeah, but like that's that's kind of like one thought, I think, right? So The reason that I kind of come to that. Oh, I know a liminal space movie. when u Homer gets stuck in the erotic cakes Not really a movie. Whatever. It's a liminal space thing. Yeah. tootally works. I mean, that's That's more of like a two thousand one space a. somewhere where I don't know where I am. Exactly, ye. He's gone to the third d. Sorry to interrupt you can. That's okay. Yeah. There are sequences in the movie where she's visiting her old childhood home that's currently being demolished for condominiums. She's watching the memory of her and her mother placing their hand in the wet cement of the driveway In the memory, we see a bulldozer come in and drop a bunch of trash on them because like those two moments, those two realities are converging. For her, it is as though they are happening right now together. I did really enjoy that the movie opens with her putting her making this memory in wet cement And it's malleable and it moves and it's a little bit fluid likeure how memories you think that they are cement Yeah. they're actually like clay, like your' They're moldable Yeah. No, I think that that's true. And I think that goes to what you're talking about the backrooms and why the copies are always wrong because the more you access the memory, the more you realize how fallible it is. It's why witness testimony. We're almost at a point where witness testimony probably shouldn't even be used in court cases. They've proven it wrong so many fucking times. It's absolutely insane. Whether or not she dies at the end of the movie kind of doesn't matter because there is a piece of her that exists there There are pieces of her that only exist in the backrooms. And also the fact too that she captures the physical part of the memory. like when they demolish the house, she takes her handprint that she had done with her her mom. and she keeps it and it's a keepsake and it moves around with her. like it's in her office. It is in her bedroom, like we show it like sixteen times. It's in her pocket when she goes into the backrooms brought it with her like a talisman. Yeah So that's definitely an embodiment of like the physicality of memories. Yes. My question is it's like What then is conjuring the back rooms, like Another David Lynch thought is just like, well, who's the dreamer then? likeike who's the one with the power to make this a thing? Is this a collective consciousness? or is this the brain? Is it a brain of a larger entity and we're like the fleas on its head kind of thing Bingo This is a perfect segue to my final thought on Fal thought And I'm not necessarily saying that this is what the movie is, but it's a fun little idea. I think that the experiences characters have in the back rooms and how unnerving it all is and about how foreign and alien it feels would not be unlike an animal wandering into an urban environment Like if you get a deer or a bear or a bird that has only ever li. We've destroyed its habitat? Yeah, we've completely destroyed its habitat. And it's just like, well, this is like the world used to exist and like the rules that I have, like this kind of looks like my in a way, but like you have right angle right I don't fuck with right an. I don't fuck with right angles. I mean, the movie opens with a bird getting trapped in in the back rooms and about how weird that is. But like there's no reason to assume that the humans here aren't the animals that have wandered into something else's environment. And we have no frame of reference for what it is, how it works or why or what it's for. And it also could be it also could just be our perception of what it looks like. like we don't understand it so our brains are trying to compute it in a way that we would understand. L maybe it is, maybe it's an alien spaceship. Maybe it's another plane of existence. exact This looks kind of like an office building. Yeah. so And it's just perception. That's yeah, right I mean, there is a theory that essentially like reality only exists because we are all holding it together ourselves collectively. and that could potentially be what the backrooms is. Like they are building. I don't wantan to watch horrorvie and feel like I've done mushrooms I don't want to think and feel at the same time. Some of us don't mind think or feel, not both.' what you're talking about. Some of us don't mind that shit. You say you love it. There is just like the langaliers. Just like the langaliers. Now there are two pieces of content that I want, which is a horrible way to describe what I'm about to recommend to I hate the word It's just because it's different media. Okay. So there is a book that I'd like to recommend and a movie that I'd like to recommend. I've turned the Wi Fi off of my phone. I can't look up the book, but I think it is called Far. A love story or Cube, a love story. I think that's what it might actually be called. And the very short book, very G good If you are a math inclined person. It is essentially about a two D circle that meets a three D square And they fall in love But like the whole idea of it is written the book is written from the perspective of an object that lives in two dimensions that only understands up down, left and right. and it meets something that lives in a completely different dimension, that understands like how to move and navigate through a three dimensional space. Fantastic book, wouldould be a great sort of primer dealing with this if it is really about humans going into another dimension and not knowing how to sort of like wander around it And the movie I'd like to recommend, which I don't really want to talk too much about because I think some of the best parts about it are things you should discover for yourself is a actual art film made by Tarkovsky called Solaris. You've probably heard of it. It's like a three hour, three and a half hour art film. It's a Russian movie. It's about traveling through space in a way, but it is also about memory. I Re really encourage you check that out if you liked the backrooms or if you're intrigued by the concepts. Like if you wanted a more scary or it is unnerving in a way, but it is much sc how like two thousand one is? I would say it is less scary than two thousand one. two thousand one' so scary. two thousand one is one of the scariest movies ever made. It's so scary. And I will defend that opinion t the day I die P probablybably screaming. but Solaris is just like a very good art film. It is mostly dialogue and it has Just some very interesting concepts that I think would make a weird left turn, but a very good companion piece to back Rps. I will say I have had way more fun talking about this movie than I thought I would. More fun than you did watching it? Yes. Damn. I have to give the movie credit there that like, okay, well, I guess I did ponder some concepts. spparked some discussion. Yeah I didn't have much of those feelings though while I watched it Yeah, But maybe that's because I wasn't immersed in the world. L I didn't watch however many short films there were. Yeah Stew with this for years. That's true. It looks like it is definitely made for fans of backackrooms. Like if you have been watching like we just watched a spattering of them before we sat down to record this review. So if you want to see like our reaction to some of those for the first time, check it out on YouTube It seems like just from the few that we watch, there are a lot of Easter eggs in this movie. Yeah Yeah. But it does look like they they did craft something on top of what these shorts were. so They did make a film here. like I will give them credit and like there is a story here. They made a movie. No we't. Yeah I know exactly what you mean. They did craft a story. They took a weird concept and made a feature film out of it. so like Kudos to you. Yeah. Anyay, that's what we thought of backrooms. you know, maybe not one hundred percent a movie for us, but something that we were able to sort of like discuss a little bit and chew on. I thought it had some really spooky sequences. Those are obviously gonna to play better in the theater. Don't get me wrong, but not a movie that I absolutely loved, unfortunately. W would love to hear what you guys thought of backrooms though, especially if you have watched all of the short films and you are like the backrooms floor. Yeah, it seems like we've got some back rooms fans on the discord like. There' been some really excited chatter in there. So I'm excited to hear what they thought of the movie. Not excited to hear them say that they thought we were idiots talking about the movie and we should have done our research. But it's just not a movie that was made for us. I don't think. Let us know We did do our research