Cherry Cola Girl

the ending of backrooms feels so fucking bleak. to have Mary be this character who exists mostly in the background for the first half, who is there to solve the main character’s problems, who isn’t allowed to leave her house, who has her mother taken from her, who watches her home be torn down to make space for a building that will house her own demise… she’s like a husk that’s only allowed to truly make her own decisions in the last twenty minutes (give or take) of the movie. and that decision has to be whether or not to give this stupid evil company (that probably could’ve helped in some way, considering the cameras. they watched just to see what would happen, to see how much more they could learn from something awful that they likely helped accelerate) what they want from her just like everyone else in her life.

they took her home and then they took her life. and all that’s left is this broken memory of what she might’ve been. meaty drywall covered in a thick epidermis.

Clark is also an incredibly interesting character to me. to be so self-aware of your own inability to take responsibility for your own actions and change and look your own therapist in the eye and beg her to tell you you’re not evil. that is a type of person I’ve met. most would call this morally grey, most label him as such. but I feel it’s perhaps a very, very dark shade of grey.

it takes a truly awful sort of person to look at the monster you know you will become in the future should you choose to stay stuck in one moment forever. one moment with someone you claim to have loved, who you will blame for the awful situation you have put yourself in. to let that monster consume you, to fully give in to it knowing that it will hurt others. the Pirate killed Kat after all, and Clark kept her head in his fridge like it was nothing. he got scared hearing the Pirate coming, knowing it would do the same thing to Mary as it did to Kat (and maybe Bobby too, I didn’t see what grabbed him).

and what a beautiful character that makes. a man stuck in a loop of traveling through the obsessions he has with his own mind, with being stuck in stagnation and distorted memory. consumed by the same thing that consumed the people he brought down here with him. himself.

I loved this movie. every second of it. even the scenes that were “too long” (who gives a fucking shit how long the scene is <3). a bleak narrative that leaves you with more questions coming out of it than you did going in. I think it would be nice if the story had an eensy bit of hope thrown in there, but it’s just. not that kind of story. corporations suck. people suck. and sometimes, some people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. they’re just unlucky. things happen. they know the wrong person. curiosity gets the best of them. whatever it is, it doesn’t always turn out for the best. it sucks. it made me uncomfortable. like something was missing, but my overall experience was complete.

I fucking loved the backrooms because of how complicated and human both clark and mary are. As mary says in the beginning, while he isnt handling it well, clark’s anger at his situation is completely normal. The way he acts in therapy is perfectly normal and helpful for working through his emotions (i love the way therapy is portrayed in this movie). He’s overworked and stressed and feels under appreciated by everyone around him, especially his wife, and it’s best to get that anger out in a controlled environment where it can be examined and worked through. But due to his unwillingness to change and entitlement that he should be able to do whatever he wants because he’s the only one financially supporting his family (at the moment), all while having seemingly no other support system than his therapist (who is not the best at her job tbh), he instead makes things worse and his mental health spirals. The situation he’s in isnt entirely his fault, but the way he’s handling it is.

And thus Mary living is because she actually learned from the trauma instead of repeating it over and over again, something only she only had the chance to learn due to the system caring about her as a white child enough to save her. But also she routinely has her control over situations stripped away from her as well, such as the end of the movie and both when her mother imprisoned her in their home and when she’s taken from her by force. Mary is given safety, comfortableness, but not control or agency or importance. Because while she is white she is also just a woman, a still life in someone else’s show until she’s deemed important enough to be rescued and put in a new sparkly cage.

They are both doomed in spite of who they are and because of it. There is no winning for them. At the end, they are still consumed by the systems in which they dedicated themselves, whether that be the backrooms itself or the medical field or greater kinds of oppression.