Backrooms - Anybody Going To See It?
Discussion
Bread Pitt said:
Opens Friday I believe but you'd never know it from the very little promotional work going on for it.
Great as an Internet series of shorts but might be a little bit marmite as a full blown horror film though.
The first YT reviews are coming out and it's getting very positive reviews as a general psychological horror even from general reviewers who aren't familiar with the Kane Pixels shorts on YT. Great as an Internet series of shorts but might be a little bit marmite as a full blown horror film though.
The die-hard Backrooms fans are giving it glowing reports, which is a good sign, even though you think they would automatically like it anyway, as very often media just gets mis-translated to the big screen and then fans hate it for not living up to the source.
It does seem from the people who saw it, that the first half of the movie is stronger than the second but on a whole, still positive.
Not much general promotion but loads of online articles about it - so they will likely have a solid fanbase to draw from when it opens. My guess is that it will make back a nice multiple of money invested in profits, unlike a lot of recent big-budget movies which have lost tens or even hundreds of millions for the studios that made them.
Saw it this evening, not as bad as I thought it would be but it's no great work either. The idea of the backrooms as a liminal space scratches at some slightly uneasy feeling of nostalgia and a déjà vu that anyone who grew.up in the late 80s and 90s will likely identify with, however I've always thought the idea of the backrooms being some sort of monster zone where abominable creatures stalk the hallways as being quite tepid and rather missing the point of what made liminal space images so popular on the net at one time.
I did notice a lot of gen Z 'creators' tried to push their own narrative and lore onto the concept of backrooms, with monsters, 'levels' etc. it seemed to me that many of them did this because they couldn't identify with what made the backrooms and other liminal images so uneasily satisfying to look at. Those original images were heavily based around 80s and 90s architecture and cultural imagery, much of which was erased by the time even the oldest gen Zers were being born, so they would never have experienced seeing and being in those places.
Of course, this works on the notion that there will be a liminal image style and language that works for gen Z, I just don't think we've seen it yet as they latched onto a style of liminal imagery that was typically being created by millennials, for millennials.
Note to add, I don't think millennials invented 'liminal spaces' but the creepypasta style that became very popular featuring yellow-lit, unusual office spaces, impossible structures akin to indoor aqua parks, 90s shopping centres etc, was most definitely a product of their imagination.
And with that, I think the strongest part of the Backrooms movie is the quiet, uneasy exploration in the first part of the film. It kind of falls flat towards the end as they try to build some sort of threat.
I did however, particularly enjoy the sequence of the therapist's childhood living room being copied until it's an empty room, then a room with a crack in the wall, then the crack opens into a small, misshapen door. I thought that was cool. The idea of the imperfect copy is a nice one and the final sequence of the interrogation room degrading from one copy to the next was cool. Reminded me of those 'i told ChatGPT to reproduce this image 200 times without making any changes' things.
I did notice a lot of gen Z 'creators' tried to push their own narrative and lore onto the concept of backrooms, with monsters, 'levels' etc. it seemed to me that many of them did this because they couldn't identify with what made the backrooms and other liminal images so uneasily satisfying to look at. Those original images were heavily based around 80s and 90s architecture and cultural imagery, much of which was erased by the time even the oldest gen Zers were being born, so they would never have experienced seeing and being in those places.
Of course, this works on the notion that there will be a liminal image style and language that works for gen Z, I just don't think we've seen it yet as they latched onto a style of liminal imagery that was typically being created by millennials, for millennials.
Note to add, I don't think millennials invented 'liminal spaces' but the creepypasta style that became very popular featuring yellow-lit, unusual office spaces, impossible structures akin to indoor aqua parks, 90s shopping centres etc, was most definitely a product of their imagination.
And with that, I think the strongest part of the Backrooms movie is the quiet, uneasy exploration in the first part of the film. It kind of falls flat towards the end as they try to build some sort of threat.
I did however, particularly enjoy the sequence of the therapist's childhood living room being copied until it's an empty room, then a room with a crack in the wall, then the crack opens into a small, misshapen door. I thought that was cool. The idea of the imperfect copy is a nice one and the final sequence of the interrogation room degrading from one copy to the next was cool. Reminded me of those 'i told ChatGPT to reproduce this image 200 times without making any changes' things.
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