Hey, you're okay.

Kane Parsons (also known as Kane Pixels), currently age 19, started making videos on the concept of the “backrooms of reality” back in 2022 for YouTube, where he used a mix of Blender (a 3D art software) and live-action video to create a story within the never-ending yellow-wallpapered rooms and hallways that one can “no-clip” into at seemingly random times. As his series went on, the concept grew from “empty spaces beyond our reality” to “a space that mirrors the memory of reality”, including approximations of pools, houses, and entire neighborhoods with the same air as a 1950s nuclear bunker designed to almost feel like outside. The YouTube series is a work of art in itself, complete with Mr. Parsons’ homemade musical scores, and the film builds off of it quite nicely.

Of note are the sets and filmography—even in the real world within the movie, the sky is too blue, like a matte painting. There is a crispness to every ridge, edge, and corner that lends to an overall uncanniness, raising the hackles even in settings that should be safe, like Dr. Mary Kline’s home or office. The main character, a furniture store owner named Clark, lives and works in said furniture store, one of the most liminal places anyone can be—imitations of rooms, technically correct but not-quite-right set-ups for dining and sleeping and living. Deuteragonist Mary’s office curtains match the papered windows of her childhood home, which in turn match her wardrobe throughout the film. Her home has empty spaces on the walls where something once was but is no longer. Keen-eyed viewers may notice the change in wallpaper patterns within the backrooms themselves as the characters wander from familiar territory to sections that mirror places they have no association with. There are horrifying things within frame which don’t jump at you but sit there until you notice them.

While Clark seems to be the main focus through most of the movie, every memory and dream-sequence belongs to Mary. Clark reveals much of his character through dialogue, but Mary, being a professional, does not speak much on her own feelings... until the climax of the film. In Clark and Mary's final sit-down, she admits that she doesn't know what to do and that she can't help Clark, just as she couldn't help her mother. She can't help everybody.

On that note, Mary also beats the creature (a manifestation of anger, loneliness, and stress) with a relic from her childhood, the last remnant of the house she grew up in and probably the last good memory she had of her mother. Letting go of the past literally saves her life--the willingness to change and not get stuck in the loops and routines your brain creates for itself saves her life, just as the unwillingness kills Clark.