♪♫ Mary Blog ♫♪

no spoilers in this post :3

Yesterday I went to see Backrooms with my girlfriend. For some background; I have loved the idea of the backrooms for a very very long time. I remember in high school being way into liminal spaces, different nostalgic sort of aesthetics, unique internet genres of horror (found footage and analogue) , and the backrooms. The latter of which being the centerpiece of all of it. I remember when Kane's first ever found footage blew up online and I followed his series with every new post. The hype I had for this movie was beyond any hype I've had for a movie prior. It actually got me back into a lot of that stuff from high school. The different aesthetics, liminal spaces, and whatnot. Hell, I can attribute my hype for this movie to bringing me back to this website after three years of inactivity.

So with all my excitement there is one big question...was it worth it? Honestly, unless it was straight up an awful movie, I was going to love it without question. I walked into the theater already knowing my opinion. This movie equally plays off of a lot of the concepts in Kane's series as well as rewriting some of it. I think it's safe to say the weird wire fungus creatures from Found Footage 1 + 2 and Pitfalls aren't really a thing anymore. I won't spoil what the entities look like here but I think he went in a really cool direction with them. The way Kane contextualizes the backrooms is really awesome. It plays off of the liminal space idea of "it feels like I've been here before" and actually gives a real reason for that. The way this movie explains everything makes me feel like it could be a good anthology series. Like if another movie were to come out it could be about an entirely different person with a different story.

I'm happy to see multiple fully found footage sequences. They were definitely my favorite parts of the movie. There's one shot at the end of a found footage scene and I won't spoil it...but you'll know it when you see it. Actually terrifying. Not to discredit the non-found footage bits either. I'm very happy to report that even filmed normally, the backrooms are shot in a way that still leaves a lot of tension. There's shots that take place where you barely see something in motion in the distance. It leaves you with the same mystery as the found footage bits.

If I'm being totally honest, my biggest problem is I wish the movie were longer. If another 20 or so minutes was spent establishing Mary and especially Clark (who was honestly pretty underdeveloped) and another 15 or so minutes was spent just wandering the backrooms (ESPECIALLY the poolrooms and the five seconds of level 2 we get to see) , I think the movie would be pretty much perfect. But despite the fact that the movie is pretty flawed, I'd still call it perfect. The spectacle of seeing this concept that has been a staple of my internet obsessions and hyperfixations for years hit the big screen in a big way (and seeing it be THIS successful) is enough for me to consider it perfect in my eyes. Give it the set design Oscar I swear to god this better win the set design Oscar.