'Backrooms' Stuns with $81M Debut
variety.com
variety.com
Anyone not familiar with Kane - who was 16 when he started making his "found footage" films in Blender - the guy is a truly brilliant mind. Listening to him talk... you can close your eyes and he speaks like someone middle aged. It's almost uncanny.
Anyhow, in addition to his genuinely excellent Backrooms videos, I highly recommend you turn off the lights and take in his The Oldest View series as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjY897CCu4g&list=PLVAh-MgDVq...
He painstakingly recreated a random demolished suburban Texas mall from archival footage. It's wild how good he is at this.
It was unsettling but maybe that was the point.
Major studios were too afraid to produce something fresh instead of numberless sequels and reboots in the last decade or so.
Last year it was basically F1 and Minecraft (and while not sequels, both are arguably well known "franchises" outside of movies - but I guess MJ and Wuthering Heights are too ;-)).
Not to say that it isn't an improvement, but we're still pretty far from seeing American cinema catching up to the world stage in originality, let alone to the golden Hollywood era.
Sadly, I heard that the studio is apparently trying to figure out how to make a Hail Mary sequel (sigh).
they put a lot of subtle hooks in the ending montage. i just hope they dont try to force it and make a direct sequel with ryan as the lead.
I enjoyed both the book and the movie btw
Backrooms was a quite successful web series on YT which in turn originated in 4chan boards.
Only the medium being sourced from is changing from successful Broadway shows, popular novels or comic books in the years past. The calculus remains the same - properties with name recognition even from other formats tend to be green-light.
But the original element that set backrooms/liminal spaces apart wasn't what was in them, but what wasn't. Sure it's creepy to be all alone, you may be afraid to get jumped, but you aren't. Some of the backrooms-inspired video games stay true to this concept.
So point is, the "Backrooms" film author may be an outsider, but he sticks to a very well-tried formula - one mainstream authors probably avoid for being too cliche more than anything.
I think calculus somewhere has changed that is allowing these small/mid sized movies to be made again.
Hell, they ditched DRM on music in that time period too and will sell you lossless ALAC as well as MP4 audio. (They obviously weren't able to talk Hollywood into that.) Steam is DRM that ensures the capability to pull rugs.
Maybe. It's not been a very prominent line of business for them, and even then I can recall a couple of significant dramas over that time - didn't they merge two different kinds of libraries and cause confusion? The unremovable U2 album is also a cause for concern, not because an extra album is bad but because it implies they see the contents of your library as up to them rather than you. Most of all, they went out of their way to break music being sold by Real for iPods, which hardly suggests a company committed to interoperability and open platforms.
> Hell, they ditched DRM on music in that time period too and will sell you lossless ALAC as well as MP4 audio. (They obviously weren't able to talk Hollywood into that.) Steam is DRM that ensures the capability to pull rugs.
Not "obvious" at all, and precisely the point at issue. I'm happy to buy music from Apple, but movies require another level of trust that they haven't reached yet. I will grudgingly, cautiously buy games from Steam when they're not available on itch/GoG, and maybe that's unfair, but Apple have never sent me the message that they want or care about me (a non-Apple hardware user) as a customer of their movies.
Open the settings and uncheck "automatically download purchased music that isn't on the device".
Fixed.
> movies require another level of trust
When Apple paid the studios extra to alliw them to upgrade previously purchased 480p movies to HD, I'd say they earned it.
And how many people run linux that this is even relevant?
> May 28, 2026
https://mastersingaming.com/2026/05/28/despite-astronomical-...
Not to mention reading this on Linux with Steam in the background.
The DRM in Steam is not one of ownership. It’s one of needing a Steam account to buy and access those installer and game files.
“You can just stream your movies from proprietary device through apple tv app” isnt Steam for Movies in the spirit of the idea. What you have described is no different than having a streaming only subscription where you dont own the files and can’t access a copy of it offline. However you are correct that if you don’t care then you probably never wanted to own a copy of the files in the first place.
> The iTunes movie store is not friendly outside of the Apple ecosystem. Making the entire idea not really affordable since you need a expensive electronic device to utilize it sanely. Might as well find another way to get to it at that point.
I pointed out that buying a movie from Apple does not require an expensive device and does not require buying any hardware from the Apple ecosystem.
You ignored the facts and kept going on about having to buy expensive Apple hardware, which it isn't and you don't.
You moved the goalposts by requiring not only that purchases not require hardware that's expensive or from Apple, you added that it must not be revocable or streamed and must work on Linux.
I am not advocating for the iTunes store or any other source for buying media, I lost interest in owning TV or movies long ago, I was just providing factual information about what doing so requires.
And I am providing factual information on what a Steam for movies is.
Also when I write things in “quotes”, does not mean someone is quoting you or inventing things you said. Quotes have many uses and contexts. Perhaps if you cannot stay on topic or focus on the criteria of what is being discussed and dont understand how quotes work, this forum is not for you.
Steam for Movies and how iTunes store does not fit that description is exactly what my original message was about. Please stop pretending otherwise.
Probably because the Linux market is too small to support an iTunes for Linux.
By my understanding, the Linux market prefers free, open source, community effort. So essentially the real question is: why aren't you making movies yourself and sharing them free with your Linux peers?
This is always the dumbest style of argument.
P1: Healthcare sucks!
P2: Oh yeah? Why aren't you a doctor?
Be serious. It's perfectly fine to criticize things and the answer is extremely rarely change your life and become a domain expert in something else to meet some kind of "oh yeah, be the solution" nonsense by somebody that often themselves refuses to get off the couch for anything meaningful.
If the Linux market is large enough for steam to support it, then it should be big enough for a movie store to support.
But it's really beside the point, since supporting games on an OS is a hell of a lot harder than supporting video. You're right that movie stores have no excuse - except the control argument, working the other way than it did for Valve.
We've also seen Apple upgrade 480p movies purchased in the past to HD which is an improvement compared to buying physical media.
Cost ranges from $5-30. Fewer dirt cheap sales than Steam, but the standard price point at launch is lower, in exchange.
(Having to explain “buying movies” makes me feel old!)
I can't watch my Amazon purchases in HD because I run Linux. I get downgraded garbage 480p instead.
I can't watch any of this while on an airplane because I'm not allowed to download it.
And I don't own any Apple hardware so iTunes is a bit of a nonstarter.
In contrast, Steam lets me play offline and bends over backwards to get games to run (e.g. Proton and many other compatibility tools). And my Steam Deck doesn't earn me any extra special privileges over anything else.
Yes, I think it's just people today have more options for entertainment. There are lots of people in this thread trying to rationalize their declining interest in movies as the failing of someone else with "there's no Steam for movies", "they don't make good original movies anymore", or "they don't hire talented people anymore" but that stuff is all happening and has been for a while. People just found other stuff to do with their time so they aren't seeking movies out as much anymore, but it's all out there if you put in a little effort to find it.
DVDs and even video tape are relatively recent.
Hollywood was a lot less risk averse before DVDs and video tape. Heck, Hollywood was less risk averse before TV became mainstream.
Yeah and it was a different business model before then with a lot more people going to theatres
> Sean Evans:
> I think a scenario lots of viewers can relate to is sitting on the couch on a Friday night, going through the streaming services, cycling through the movies and thinking to themselves "they're not making movies for me anymore". As somebody who's been intimately involved in movie making for 30 years, what are the macro Hollywood conditions behind that sentiment?
> Matt Damon:
> Well, so what happened was the DVD was a huge part of our business - of our revenue stream - and technology has just made that obsolete. And so, the movies that that we used to make: you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theater because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release and 6 months later you'd get a whole other chunk - it would be like reopening the movie almost.
> And when that went away, that changed the type of movies that we could make. I did this movie "Behind the Candelabra" and I talked to a studio executive who explained: it was a $25 million movie. I would have to put that much into print and advertising to market it - what we call P&A - so now I'm in $50 million. I have to split everything I get with the exhibitor, the people who own the movie theaters, so I would have to make $100 million before I got into profit. The idea of making $100 million on a story about this love affair between these two people... Yeah, love everyone in the movie, but that's suddenly a massive gamble in a way that it wasn't in the 1990s when they were making all those kind of movies - the kind of movies that I loved and the kind of movies that were my bread and butter.
Edit: yes, it was direct to HBO. So maybe Damon was just using it as an example because he knew the production cost off the top of his head.
"the kind of movies that I loved and the kind of movies that were my bread and butter (are no longer affordable if I was to do a cinema release)"
So maybe Behind the Candelabra was direct to HBO precisely because of the economics he was pointing out?
Hollywood has also completely failed to cultivate a new generation of celebrities. God, we had a few years of nothing but Pedro Pascal to the point we have memes inside memes.
And the cost of production has gone way down, you don't need a specialized studio to put in CGI these days when some guys Blender can do better.
So Hollywood is busy being in a downward spiral eating itself while so much room has opened for "indie" to eat their lunch and dinner.
Pre-Covid there was simply not enough major weekends to release a big movie. They end up competing with each other.
Sure, Baby Driver made $300m on a $40m budget. But for pure profit maximization you are better off making a billion dollars on a $500m budget.
If you have only 4-5 good chances to make money in a year, you're going to maximize revenue over profitability.
Lol no you're not. $1B off a 500M production budget would be a disaster bordering on a flop. You've not taking marketing into account. You've not taking having to split earnings with theaters into account. Baby Driver is the more desired outcome 10/10.
AAA video game makers are having the same problem.
Is it worth being involved in indie production when success just guarantees a hate campaign against you? It will probably happen over Backrooms soon enough.
Like most projects, some indie productions (like TADC) end in creator burnout, others (like iron lung) end in moderate success, most probably end somewhere in between. We saw this with undertale, lights out, hazbin hotel, primer, el mariachi…
What A24 is doing with this movie is what the large studios have been doing, they're just doing it for a different audience. It's franchise driven content but simply 'gamer-coded' and sourced from Youtube or game-related media rather than from more traditional sources, mobilizing the gen-z fans of that content.
Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die
Honey Bunch
Cold Storage
Send Help
Marty Supreme
Dust Bunny
Fackham Hall
Eternity
Rental Family
Bugonia
Roofman
Still a lot of people buy those, so studios continue to make them.
Also indie games are too cheap. I noticed the need to correct my own thinking: Why should the boring game of a big publisher cost more than the great game made by a single guy? And allowed myself to use more money when I want to support smaller studios.
Major studios produce movies that most people want to see. The cinephiles don't like those films, but conveniently, they do like films that don't cost a quarter of a billion dollars to make.
The headline here is about a movie that took in $81 million. The Mandalorian took in about the same amount in its first weekend, and it's considered a financial disaster.
If people would start going to see more of those low-budget movies, they'd see a lot more interesting films. The cinephiles would be thrilled, because it would get those films into major theaters (over 2,000 for this film), rather than having to seek them out in tiny arthouse theaters for very few showings.
In general, there is sooo much free money on the ground for large, hierarchical American corporations to do the following
1. Give young talented people resources and freedom
2. Don't put them through endless bullshit internal status games
The reason why the tech industry in the US thrives so much is partially due to the fact that it is one of the few industries that gives people high salaries and agency in their roles without a huge amount of experience.
Almost everywhere else is just an artifically gated series of internal politics, nepotism and pointless rituals in too-big-to-fail industries, which attract people who prefer these games over actual results.
Give talented people money period.
It looked a lot more polished than what I'd expect from an indie producer, though.
I liked it, and it's a shame that it was killed. Kind of a "slow burn," though, so I think I know why it was killed.
Probably worth a watch if you enjoy the genre. If you’re someone who just enjoys a good story, this is a pretty easy skip.
Yeah it's pretty good. I am in my late 30. Excited for Backrooms which isnt yet available
The movie was great but it's not a stand-alone movie, it is a small piece of the full story so don't go in thinking that everything will be explained and tied up in a neat little bow.
The movie takes place in Kane Pixel (the movie director's) youtube series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVAh-MgDVqvDUEq6qDXqO...
It makes a lot more sense if you watch the full youtube series first.
To fair, the original WTF appeal of the web series' creepy Backroom vibe was great but it did start to get a little tired for me right before Kane expanded things beyond the initial "I'm trapped all alone in this endless place." But I've never been a big fan of horror plots that revolve too much around "two minutes of suspenseful creeping" building to an inevitable jump scare. Now that the movie is doing great, I'm hoping we'll get a follow-up that further develops the later parts of web series and keeps going.
Vg nafjrerq gur gvzryvar bs ubj gur onpxebbzf jrer perngrq.
Va 1972 Vina Orpx jnf qbvat culfvpf rkcrevzragf naq jnf noyr gb znxr znggre qvfnccrne sebz bhe fcnpr.
Bapr ur svtherq bhg gung vg unq orra genafcbegrq vagb n qvssrerag fcnpr, ur crgvgvbarq gur tbireazrag sbe rkgen shaqvat. Vs gur HF tbireazrag pbhyq perngr rkgen fcnpr ng jvyy, vg jbhyq or n fpvragvsvp oernxguebhtu ba gur beqre bs fcyvggvat gur ngbz naq jbhyq punatr gur jbeyq. Vg sryy haqre gur cheivrj bs gur Qrcnegzrag bs Raretl (gur fnzr qrcnegzrag vaibyirq jvgu ahpyrne jrncbaf).
Guebhtu gurve rkcrevzragf gelvat gb perngr n ynetre qbbejnl ("guerfubyq") gb n arj fcnpr, gurl pnhfrq gur snzbhf 1989 rnegudhnxr naq trarengrq gur onpxebbzf nf jr xabj gurz, qvfpbirerq gur ragvgvrf jvguva, naq jrer erfcbafvoyr sbe gur nppryrengvat zvffvat crefbaf pnfrf nf zber naq zber bcravatf orpnzr cbccvat hc.
Gurl xarj gur ceboyrz jnf trggvat jbefr, naq gurl pbagvahrq gb pbire vg hc naq pbagvahr gur rkcrevzragf, nyy va gur ubcrf bs zbargvfvat gurz be hfvat gurz gb tnva n fgengrtvp nqinagntr bire bgure pbhagevrf.
Gur zbivr fubjrq jung unccrarq jvgu bayl bar bs gubfr qbbejnlf. (naq gur qbbejnl gur frnthyy pnzr guebhtu, naq gur bevtvany guerfubyq va gur Nflap snpvyvgl).
Jr nyfb fnj gung gur onpxebbzf pbagvahrq gb ribyir bire gvzr orpbzvat zber ernyvfgvp, riraghnyyl sbezvat gur "fgvyy-yvsrf" jvgu rqvoyr juvgr znff syrfu.
Juvpu yrnqf gb gur gehr ubeebe:
Nf gur jnyy orgjrra obgu fcnprf orpbzrf guvaare ng na rire vapernfvat engr, naq nf gur onpxebbzf pbagvahrf gb ribyir, jung unccraf arkg, naq jvyy jr or noyr gb fnir bhefryirf?
Make sure you're not getting confused with random analog-horror / backrooms videos from random creators. Those videos are connected to the movie in any way.
Kane Pixels (Kane Parson)'s youtube series and the movie were both made by him and are in the same canon. It's definitely a canon where you need to pay attention and rewatch things to see the connections. It's probably the closest thing Hollywood has ever been to a House of Leaves style story.
(too late to make edits)
The two leads are a guy you never see and a small puppet (with the big reveal new character being a CGI alien). As great as they were, C3PO, Yoda and Chewbacca couldn't have carried Empire Strikes Back as the leads. What was Disney thinking?
"We continue to make a shit-load of money off toys and merchandizing"
Andor is great, don't get me wrong. But Star Wars is best when it's pulp adventure stuff.
Of course the cowboy and samurai pulp genres are pretty similar and borrowed a lot from each other. Lone Gunslinger with a code of honor versus a Lone Swordsman with a code of honor
This is the way. I saw the first Star Wars the week it opened as a tween and it rocked my world. Both SW and Raiders of the Lost Ark had a clear vision of building on the proven structure of the old B&W movie serials like Flash Gordon but updating them with modern storytelling tools and larger budgets. It was a truly great concept and then Empire raised the stakes higher and even better.
You're right that Mando Season 1 was an attempt to get back to the original concept and it got close. Skeleton Crew is perhaps the only other SW series where the core idea was to update a proven structure of the past in a pure and focused way - except it chose a different genre than 1930s serials. Initially I didn't know what to make of Skeleton Crew but once I got that it was building on the 1980s tween adventures like Goonies, I appreciated how it absolutely nailed what it was going for. My own kids are now older than Skeleton Crew's target audience, so it obviously wasn't for me but I applaud it as Disney's only other pure attempt at applying the 'big idea' that made OG SW great to another genre.
As a sci-fan who loved the original IP to the point of reverence, even bad Star Wars is usually at least interesting but it can also be frustrating when it evokes echoes of the OG by being set in the same universe without even trying to be great in the same ways as the OG. For example, Andor is unique in being a spin-off that is actually very good but I'd argue none of the things that make it so good require being set in the Star Wars universe. It might be even better if it had been unshackled from the rules of the Star Wars cinematic universe and was a new, original sci-fi IP.
Yes, exactly. Andor could easily have been a story of French Resistance against Nazi Germany during WW2
Star Wars is definitely at its best when it is not just being Star Wars
Same with Marvel, but that's another discussion
I think it shows the potential of using the Star Wars setting to tell a wide variety of stories. However, although I loved the original trilogy, I wouldn't class myself as a huge Star Wars fan - probably more of a Trekkie.
Unfortunately, all the Trek shows have been canceled, so it looks like you're not going to have much to watch for a while. There's a final short season of Strange New Worlds done and coming soon, followed by the last season of Starfleet Academy and that's it.
For the first time in decades no new Star Wars series or movie is even rumored to be in development. Paramount has brand new owners with very different ideas and even Alex Kurtzman's (current Head of Trek) contract is expiring and hasn't been renewed. It's not clear SkyDance has any appetite for funding mega-expensive prestige sci-fi series. The currently unaired episodes were already finished or in production when SkyDance took over and they've approved nothing Star Trek since. When production wrapped, the huge sets built for both SNW and Academy (the most expensive in Star Trek history) weren't even put in storage, Paramount just had them dumpstered instead.
I actually thought SNW was pretty good as it was getting back to the core of what made TOS and TNG Star Trek good. But my 17 year-old daughter had sub-zero interest in Starfleet Academy and she was the target demographic. Sadly, things aren't looking good. The 60th year of Trek could be the last. Personally, I'm hoping that Paramount at least sells the Star Trek IP to someone - maybe Netflix or Amazon? All the billions that were being thrown at buying streaming market share for over a decade has dried up, so it's a bad time for an expensive property whose last few outings weren't big hits to be looking for a new home.
However, the best modern Star Trek has to be The Orville.
Oh... you had to go and bring up the musical episode. :-)
Let me preface with: I actually like some more modern, top-tier musicals. I saw Wicked on Broadway with the original cast and was blown away by how good it was. Greatest Showman has 3 killer songs and I have 3 or 4 songs from Rent on my playlist, even though I've never seen the play. As for the broader musical genre, I don't mind the best of Lloyd Webber and I respect the craft of Gershwin and Sondheim but don't enjoy it enough to listen to - and average-quality musicals just aren't my thing.
That said, the SNW musical episode featured shockingly good songs in the musical genre and several of the cast are extraordinary singers. While I appreciated the way SNW committed to going all-in on an edgy concept, and it was clearly a labor of love which consumed many unpaid hours... to me, it just isn't Trek. Even a very good Trek musical can only exist in an uncanny valley for me. I know people who loved it. I get that they were watching it and feeling "OMG, I love that Trek is 'boldly going...' with such creative experiments!" and "OMFG, they can really SING!", "the songs are actually GOOD!" but those are all meta-thoughts, and if most of my thoughts during first-watch are meta-thoughts, something's wrong. Another sign of trouble: I can't actually recall any of the major plot points of the episode.
I grew up in the 70s and fell in love watching TOS re-runs after school and dutifully watched all the ST movies during first-run, liking the even numbered ones more. Then as an adult, I loved TNG's entire run. As we said about OG Star Wars earlier in this thread, Trek represents a strong core premise to me (Roddenberry's concept pitch to NBC for TOS was "Wagon Train to the Stars"). And I'm fine when they play with the premise a little. I didn't mind when TOS did 'humorous' episodes, Mudd's Planet is still a classic and even Trouble with Tribbles didn't bother me. But when an IP with such a strong core identity strays too far from the fundamental nature of "what it is", I start to lose connection with it.
As I said about Andor, it's not that I reject branching out creatively. It's more that beyond a certain point, it's gone so far it starts becoming a different thing. To me, that's a sign it should have been born as it's own thing from the start. That lets the new thing define itself, find its unique core and be great on it's own terms. But when the root IP is one with decades of legacy core identity, anything that should be a new thing inherits creative baggage the size of a planet. This is bad because the new thing will inevitably start creatively rubbing up against the constraints of the root IP.
A simple litmus test for any high-concept in this context is to ask "Would it work if it was launched as it's own series in this existing universe?" I can imagine a Mudd's Planet spin-off series focused on Harry's adventures working great. It would benefit creatively from being set in the Star Trek universe and could even strengthen the Trek-verse in occasional cross-over episodes. Now ask the same question about a musical sci-fi series. How much would it creatively gain versus what it loses from being limited to the Trek-verse? The benefit would mainly be brand recognition drawing Trek fans to early episodes but, by definition, it's so different it'll inevitably have to stand or fall on its own. How would a musical cross-over with a different Trek series even work? As someone who's never seen Lower Decks, I found the SNW / LD cross-over episode not only weak but disorienting. The problem wasn't animation, it was tonal divergence between two things that work apart but not together (a sign that Lower Decks probably didn't gain as much from being in the Trek-verse as it lost). Two inverse examples are the excellent movie Galaxy Quest and John Scalzi's outstanding novel Red Shirts. Both are obviously completely inspired by the Trek-verse, but not being Paramount licensed, they are based on "a generic long-running, beloved sci-fi TV series" and neither suffers for it. In fact, they each diverge from the Trek-verse in several ways that allow them to be even better in ways they couldn't have been if they were set in the Trek-verse.
That's why I'd rather see a new musical sci-fi series have the freedom of creating it's own universe that best serves its unique creative needs.
Conversely, there are a quite a few creatively bold Trek episodes which branch significantly into different genres, yet don't go too far which are commonly found at the top of "Best Episode Ever" lists. For example, TOS episode "City on the Edge of Forever" is considered one of the greatest episodes of not just Trek but any sci-fi show - and it's a 1930s noir detective story! Yet when you read descriptions of it, it's not described as "that noir detective episode", it's more "the amazing Star Trek story Harlan Ellison wrote." It's not remembered for the gimmick, it's revered for the story. Similarly, TNG episode "Inner Light" is an adult drama that could easily be a non-sci-fi fantasy movie starring Tom Hanks - yet is ranked in the top five TNG episodes of all time. The key difference is they are great episodes with gimmicks, not episodes with great gimmicks.
Personally, I enjoy it when writers/producers try out an experiment and have particular episodes that don't really fit in with the themes and expectations of the series as a whole, but they do tend to polarise people.
The classic example that I think of with regards to musical episodes is the Buffy The Vampire Slayer epsiode "Once More, With Feeling". Joss Whedon had been experimenting with different concepts, such as "Hush" (the opposite of a musical episode) and "The Body" (stunning piece of television in my view), so throwing in a musical episode wasn't completely unexpected, but that particular episode pushed forwards and resolving some major plot points with characters revealing deep secrets.
(It's interesting that the three Buffy episodes I mentioned are considered the best episodes despite them having dramatically different styles).
My opinion: the closest movie, in spirit, to A New Hope is The Mummy (the 1999 one with Brendan Fraser).
I find your Mummy/New Hope idea intriguing and maybe raise you Raiders of the Lost Ark.
You might be thinking of The Phantom Menace with its trade negotiations. The movie that Red Letter Media panned because of its focus on this plot point.
The feeble nod to politics in A New Hope mostly went over my head as a kid. It was already obvious the Empire was evil. They had a guy who choked people at a whim and another who blew up planets. The scene telling us the Emperor had dissolved the Senate meant nothing to me.
> maybe raise you Raiders of the Lost Ark
Fair point.
I'd love to see a serious live-action show based on the idea of the Bad Batch (not copying the same story as the animated series, of course).
Wandering around the halls of some functional institution was definitely a childhood past time of mine. Now still wondering how our parents and grandparents enjoyed private office space, lounge furniture designed by professional celebrities like Eames, and time, doing more with less. Now stuck at home or wandering in some open plan space that looks like college kids got permission to use a charge card at Ikea.
In the meantime, claymation studio Laika has a faithful adaptation of "Piranesi" in the pipeline. It's more dreamlike and beautiful than gothic horror, but it does center on a similar concept of an infinite structure existing beyond physically reality that reflects human thought in enigmatic ways.
<:)
Liminal spaces I get. Reminds of Severance. And anyways, how is this worth going to a theater for? <Shrug> A24 has done well. Is 81M considered breaching 'mainstream'? Because these niche horror things being portrayed as part of the greater 'culture' is tiring.
If you can get over your preconceived notions, I'd bet that you'd really enjoy this movie. It's extremely well executed and genuinely unsettling without ever getting gory, comedic or stupid.
Give me comedy. Oh how I miss the 90 minute comedy movie.
I'm not saying this to be contrarian or give you a hard time. You should watch whatever makes you feel joy.
However, you shouldn't be surprised that for a lot of people, music, movies, television and books (I kid, I kid) that don't surprise, challenge, shock, confuse or inspire us feels vapid, hollow and intellectually insulting.
Long live the counterculture.
That said I do like your description of “falling through the skin of the world.” A+.
Backrooms for me was definitely a yum!
If it helps, there's some stratification that makes understanding it a bit confusing at first. There's basically four layers:
- The original 4chan post, a vaguely unsettling photo of an odd yellow room with an evocative caption about it being a vast realm outside reality that you can accidentally fall into to be stalked by unseen monsters.
- This post went viral and kicked off the "creepy liminal spaces" trend, where people found or created unnerving images of dark or abandoned places that are normally busy, like malls, schools, hotels, airports, etc.
- This evolved into the idea that the original yellow Backrooms is just one of infinitely-many connected environments/levels, each reflecting a different surreal aesthetic: tiled pools, children's playspaces, empty suburbs, etc. People also invented their own weird creatures that inhabited them (think the SCP Foundation stuff crossed with Five Nights at Freddy's). This resulted in an explosion of videos, wikis, and indie games exploring and expanding the concept.
- Kane Parsons created a more restrained and focused version of the above in his YouTube series, dispensing with the profusion of levels and monsters and drilling down on various first-person, found-footage explorations of the original Backrooms and glimpses of the mysterious company researching it. His take became by far the most popular, and landed him the director role for the film, which has turned out to be quite thoughtful and well-done.
I definitely recommend checking it out if you like surreal psychological horror. It's good even if you're not familiar with his web series.