Adri

I love that the main fear is the fear of yourself and your past. The things we can’t change, that mold so many of us into who we are and have put us on the path we are on. The things that we have to actively accept and acknowledge, or the things we don’t. And how those things that we choose to ignore must be addressed.

Clark is a man who has lost his wife, his house (that he pays for he’ll have you know), is behind on bills and runs a dying furniture store that he hates because all he ever wanted to be was an architect. He flies into rages about things that are his fault, refuses to see the world from a perspective outside of his own, and feels more comfortable staying inside drunk, watching tv and getting mad when the lights turn out. It makes total sense why he’d want to stay in the Backrooms despite it’s clear dangers.

Mary is a women who lost her mother to mental illness while being raised in a home surrounded by said illness. She’s a well meaning therapist who clearly wants to help others because she needs help herself. She’s carries a literal piece of her past, forcing it to always be a part of who she is. For a woman who preaches about letting go she has a hard time doing that herself.

For both of these people, it makes sense why they’d get lost here; and I felt two main themes outside the main one in the story itself. We all know about Asyc and their research and whatnot, but I love that we follow regular people. Anyways.

1: Consequences of accepting one’s worst self

I felt like Clark’s story told about the consequences of letting yourself slip into your darkest self. The part that we hide away, that we are ashamed off, that is often called ego but is also seen as our natural self. Our worst self. It’s a part of us so we can’t deny it, but we hold deep shame towards it as a collective.

He lost his mind stuck in the Backrooms with the only thing that kept him company being Captain Clark (aka the monster that took on Clark’s image) and the other 3 beings we see. We see the woman in Red, the man with stripes, and the man in the wheelchair. I didn’t get a particularly big feeling towards these three characters, but I did feel that the woman in Red was very representative of Barbara. (At least she could be interpreted as such. We don’t ever actually see Barbara or who she is as an actual character outside of the role-play therapy sessions, but he literally scalped her to make Mari look like her more so yeah). The man in stripes is used to show that the people that show up here are unfeeling, unthinking and edible, so Clark and Mary are the only real people that matter. The man in the wheelchair is not particularly indicative of anything specific from what I could tell.

Captain Clark, to me, represents the rage and anger Clark has. The parts that he hasn’t healed, his resentment, his addiction. I don’t think Clark is ever a bad person in the film, rather I think Clark is after what everyone is after, comfort and love regardless of how we are. We as humans don’t like to change and we want to be accepted for all our actions. But that acceptance eventually turns into enabling, and when Barbra kicked Clark out, she stopped accepting him. Enabling him. That hurt. And the anger he already held worsened. So when he falls into the back rooms and he gets obsessed with it like he would, there’s no doubt in my mind that he started to feel a level of acceptance from Captain Clark. It started as a monster, but it took his shape. His memories. His thoughts and feelings. It hadn’t attacked him at this point either, almost waiting for permission to do so. He assumed that for whatever reason, this being accepted him and that he was home in a way.

And when he was finally told he didn’t have to change, he accepted captain Clark, unaware that Captain Clark was purely just a manifestation of the back rooms and it ate him, before chasing Mary down. But Captain Clark, being representative of his rage, his alcoholism, his inability to accept the past, his resentment; was given permission to consume him and change him, and take over. A normal man, broken by the past turned cruel and inhumane because of it.

2: Becoming Stuck in our past / Dementia

For Mary, I got something a little different. I felt like while Clark became a monster in the back rooms. She was much like the man in stripes furniture an object. She never left the Backrooms. The closest she got to escaping was in the AC facility with Phil and I don’t think they were ever gonna let her leave. Her memories had become part of the Backrooms, distorted as well. And despite letting go of her physical past, using the concrete hand print to fight back against Captain Clark, she wasn’t able to leave. She herself became trapped, became like the furniture that took up space. Immobile, unthinking, unfeeling, ahusks of what she used to be. It made me think of dementia and what it must be like to have it. To forever be trapped in your memories and losing them at th same time. Watching the world distort around you and knowing that you yourself are no longer what you remember being. That’s your actively decay and there’s no stop to it.

I think during the scene where she was taken in by Asyc and they were probing her with questions, and she finally asked what they were gonna do to her, and seeing Phil’s face; she knew she wouldn’t get out.

I don’t think she knew that they would leave her there, but she knew it was over for her. Because the wind chimes began, Philes voice dulled, and suddenly the memories of her room passed by; becoming more lost and wrong as they passed. Then we see her, stuck in the Backrooms, with her face spilt into 3 and several extra fingers on her hands. The world around her fell apart and she can do nothing but stare blankly.

Of course it’s not confirmed if Asyc were the ones who left her there, we just know that she never got out. She was stuck there at the end of the movie, trapped in a room very similar to the office her and Phil were in when he was questioning her. It’s possible Asyc did something else, but Asyc seems like the type of company that wouldn’t want people talking about the back rooms.. and it would be better if they don’t have to kill anyone to keep their mouths shut. So what if they leave them stuck in the back rooms? It’s not like they haven’t done it before. There’s monsters that’ll do the job for you and if they’re lucky and live, they’ll just get lost in an endless maze of endless corridors, exits and entrances, forever losing sight of why they’re even there.

Two different people, both searching for the same thing in diffrent ways. One became a monster and died, the other got lost and lives as a husk. Both of them becoming apart of the Backrooms.

Okay that’s my rant I’m done now I loved this movie I’m gonna get the dvd soon. I might re-edit this in the morning but I’m tired. Sorry if it’s ranting I kinda do just wanna rant about this movie :)