Backrooms

I knew nothing about the Backrooms creepypasta before this, but after seeing the trailer I immediately knew we were watching it and we did.

First, the set design and spaces deserve a mention — the streets, the rooms and especially the back rooms themselves were really well done. Lots of spoilers ahead, so I’d recommend watching the film first before continuing!

What I liked most about this film is that instead of going for straightforward horror, the creators brought in a lot of psychology and made it a psychological horror rather than just a supernatural one. It might be a touch too on-the-nose for my taste, but looking at the reviews it’s clear that a lot of people didn’t pick up on the psychological layer at all and were just waiting for a typical horror film with jump-scares and a weird plot.

For me, this story isn’t really about a strange place with distorted rooms — it’s about two people with very different mental struggles: Clark is a narcissist and Mary is a saviour.

Clark blames everyone else for his miserable life and choices, refuses to do any work on himself, and gravitates toward things that confirm his existing view of the world. He’s aggressive and destructive — toward others and himself — which leads directly to the unpleasant end he gets. He also keeps trying to project his relationship with his ex-wife onto his therapist.

Mary, on the other hand, was traumatised by her mother and by her inability to help her as a child. To compensate, she became a therapist — someone who helps, fixes and saves people. By the end of the film, she admits she can’t actually do that. Her trauma and her saviour complex stop her from seeing Clark for what he is and instead of calling the police when he suddenly disappears, she gets pulled into his mess trying to help him.

The back rooms, I think, represent the chaotic and lonely unconscious of Clark — a place where he’s trapped as a failed architect surrounded by broken, dead-end architecture that mirrors his unfulfilled ambitions and unresolved issues. I also liked the detail of the mannequin of Clark’s wife in the back rooms’ kitchen, silently shaking her head — saying “no” with her body. And the idea that you can consume people in the back rooms feels like a reflection of how Clark uses people in real life: instead of building actual relationships, he just takes what he needs from them. Here, he can literally consume them.

I liked that throughout the film we only really see the few people who actually matter to the story. The fact that no one ever comes into Clark’s store, which in real life would be impossible, since he still has to pay rent and bills, shows just how isolated he really is. And when he goes missing, no one files a police report. No one looks for him, except his therapist, and even she had her own agenda. She wasn’t doing it for him; she was doing it for herself.

The more you think about this film, the more you find in it, but then this review would go on forever.