Backrooms

[Frank Cox]

Give the teenagers a movie that they want to watch and they'll show up to watch it.

More teens have been walking in my door to see Backrooms than I've seen coming here in years.

I've been telling people that I don't know where the teenagers all went because I sure don't see many of them here any more. Apparently it's content-based because they're back this weekend.

The movie itself is actually pretty good. The concept and story is more original than most Hollywood movies are these days and I'm sure that helps with getting people interested as well. My only issue with it is that the story doesn't really resolve itself at the end; it's one of those movies which just kind of comes to a stop and rolls the credits. Which means that the setup is in place for the sequel, of course.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've stumbled across some of the Backrooms YouTube videos in the past. The concept is pretty intriguing and plays with the concept of "liminal spaces". A liminal space is sort of a space between spaces, like a hotel hallway or a hallway in an office or shopping mall... Many of those places were never designed to be beautiful or to stand out, but still have this special atmosphere...

It all started once somebody pasted the picture below into some on-line forum:
HobbyTown_USA_Oshkosh_interior_under_construction_2002_(The_Backrooms).jpg

[Frank Cox]

The filmmakers used 37,000 square feet of wallpaper and 29,000 square feet of carpeting to create the backrooms maze.

[Leo Enticknap]

I saw the first 15-20 minutes of it after completing a Barco maintenance D (coolant pump swapout), to make sure that the temperatures stablized and stayed stable afterwards. The electrician who couldn't figure out what some breakers on a panel were powering gave me a giggle - I've seen that scenario play out in real life many times on installs.

I mentioned the movie in passing to my wife, who is a licensed MFT (marriage and family therapist): she looked up the plot summary on some website or other, and commented in response that this must be about the first movie ever to feature a therapist as one of the main characters and which Woody Allen had nothing to do with!

In any case, it's heartening to see a film with a good idea, well executed, but not much money overhaul the latest Star Bores installment at the box office.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I'm impressed that someone who will turn 21 next week was able to create a movie that has grossed well over $200M. His father is a video game developer and his mother is a therapist, so there's the therapist connection. More about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_Parsons . Pretty impressive!

[Jim Cassedy]

I rarely have the luxury to sit and watch many of the movies I handle. I'm usually far
too busy for such nonsense. But I did sit and watch about 30min of BACKROOMS
last week when I had some time to kill while waiting for an unusually long ingest to
complete. I found the concept engaging, and I'll probably watch it at some point in
the future, even if I have to catch it online.

The electrician who couldn't figure out what some
breakers on a panel were powering gave me a giggle
- I've seen that sceneraio play out many times . .

lol, Leo- - that happens to be one of the scenes I saw the other day and I was
thinking more or less exactly the same thing.

Also, this movie reminded me very much of a Japanese movie I ran last year
called EXIT 8, most of which takes place in a never-ending Tokyo subway station.
I did get to see most of Exit 8 and liked it, which is why I think I'd like BACKROOMS
if I ever gettachance to watch it.

"EXIT 8" (2025) Movie Poster
Exit8_Poster.jpg

[Jon Dent]

My fifteen year old son is obsessed with it, so being the dutiful father I've taken him to it twice.

The ending is pretty goofy, but most everything leading up to it is far better than it had any right or need to be. A20 clearly saw something in Parsons that made them willing to invest in him, and they turned out to be right.

Neither time was the best movie going experience though. First time we went an hour away to a theater that had a broken left screen channel. Second time was at the theater I do tech work for and I guess our side surround amp fritzed out sometime recently. Plus the three people that I pegged as annoying loud talkers when they walked in turned out to be exactly that and they sat two seats to the right so I could hear them really well...

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've seen Exit 8, what I only learned afterwards is that that movie was based on a video game, with a pretty similar concept than the movie. While it's clearly inspired by the concept of liminal spaces, it's unclear to me if it has a more direct connection to the backrooms.

The first "real backrooms" movie, based on the 4chan picture I posted earlier is this one:

Who would expect that 4chan can foster more than just hate and bigotry inspired political movements and mass-produced conspiracy theories?

[Jon Dent]

4chan is the perfect microcosm of the human species: mostly vile and awful but with occasional glimmers of creativity and positivity.

[Leo Enticknap]

My fifteen year old son is obsessed with it, so being the dutiful father I've taken him to it twice.

Same with mine and Five Nights at Freddy's, the differences being (a) he's only ten; (b) your son actually got to see some innovative and thoughtful filmmaking, rather than just a crude attempt to make a few more bucks off the back of a video game franchise; but (c) we got top notch technical presentation at the Harkins Mountain Grove in Redlands, CA, which has been consistently excellent on all but one of the probable 40-50 times I've gone there as a customer since the place opened just before covid. The exception was the very slight convergence drift that I noticed when we took him to see Angry Birds, but I'm sure that no-one else saw it and I wouldn't have done if the movie wasn't an animation. When we saw another movie in the same house about 2-3 months later, it had been fixed.

[Marcel Birgelen]

For whatever reason, I ended up seeing the first "Five Nights at Freddy's"... What struck me that they actually managed to create a sequel to that one...

[Jon Dent]

Same with mine and Five Nights at Freddy's, the differences being (a) he's only ten; (b) your son actually got to see some innovative and thoughtful filmmaking, rather than just a crude attempt to make a few more bucks off the back of a video game franchise

He's into Five Nights at Freddy's too (even though he's never played the games) so I had to suffer through FNAF 2.

Backrooms was better.