and I'm not dead yet, so I guess I'll be alright

I really did like the ending of the Backrooms 2026, actually. The twist that the Backrooms is a space that you can physically exit but a part of you mentally will always be trapped in is a great subversion and really effectively inverts the concept. The main scientist character looks directly into the camera and reveals he is still caught in the same nostalgia trap that Clark was, stuck in a repetitive motion and going nowhere. Mary got out but she's still in there. You can leave but you can never escape

i really love the motif of windows in Backrooms. mary’s book being called “the window within”. the curtains in her office always being drawn. the shot of her behind glass in her own home during the gathering at her house. clark looking through the window into his own house. him being unable to see kat through the glass she can see him through. the window in mary’s mother’s house. the windows in the hospital her mother is brought to that only look out to another building. the drawing that mary finds of captain clark reaching someone up towards a window. the fale window in clark’s “home” in the backrooms that just looks out to more of the same empty space. the window in the interrogation room that’s too high to see out of (and thus to determine if it’s real). the fact that the backrooms lacks any windows to a true “outside space”, and how terrifying that makes it. there is no window within. or, at least, not one that any of them can find

a handprint made in concrete is just the image of a hand, it’s not the real thing. or, it’s the absence of a hand, more than anything, the negative space. the casing around where it should be. it’s an indent that was made from something real - that could not have existed without something real - but it’s not the real thing, it’s just trying to be. maybe it’s not even trying. you put your hand there with your mother and the concrete remembers, and the handprint doesn’t even know why it exists, it just does. if we can make copies and not-things from real things in the world, who’s the say the world couldn’t do that itself? does it even need to know why?