vii- perversion

look at him go 🫶

camera angles!!!

when we’re with clark as he travels through the backrooms, the camera angles feel claustrophobic. there are a lot of tight shots of his face, and POV shots than any other character.

when we’re travelling with mary, the shots are agoraphobic. she’s out of her depth, and it gives you such a wide pan of the backrooms that you instinctively search every corner of the camera for Something.

clark feels trapped in his life. he works a dead end job, he’s been kicked out of his house, and overall feels very defeated. the camera angles reflect that, clark is afraid of being trapped.

mary, on the other hand, is still struggling with her mother’s agoraphobia. while she doesn’t have any massive indicators that she too has it, as the movie progresses and she starts dwelling on the trauma of her mother’s abuse more and more, she almost uses her mother’s fear as a way to cope with the backrooms.

i think this may also be connected to that first therapy scene we see, where we’re immediately introduced to the theme of the movie; in order to change your life, you need to change. if you don’t change your own behavior, you’ll be stuck in the cycle forever. we’re also shown two contrasting shots of mary and clark; mary with her back to a closed window, and clark with his back to an open one. this reflects their claustrophobic and agoraphobic parallels, but it also parallels the final shot of the movie, where mary is the one with her back to an open window. before each character gets sucked into the backrooms, they turn their back on the window. they turn their back on any hope of changing, and instead decide to stay stagnant. they can question people (phil or mary), they can complain, they can mourn, but if they refuse to exit the window, they will be trapped in the loop forever.

REAL backrooms enthusiasts know that the original concept of the backrooms from the original photo is what inspired Kane to make his own interpretation, therefore i don't get why people are so surprised that Kane used found footage in the way he did

Part 1