#arti rambles

Strengths

🟡The Vibes™ were kept throughout the whole film. That dreamy, something-is-wrong-but-what? feeling that the original backrooms/liminal spaces movement had before it started being associated with slop. Even in real life/the front rooms/etc, the way things are filmed and colored and so on portray that unreality sensation. Those blue skies were as unsettling as they could be. It makes me happy to feel that unnerving dream again, very well done.

🟡The found footage element was a key part of the movie, it wasn't just a blip at the beginning! I'm a sucker for found footage so maybe I'm biased, but it makes me happy to see such a core element from the original Pixels videos kept.

🟡I appreciate the different themes explored. There's the mental health/destructive patterns being represented with the literal looping rooms and Clark claiming to be comfortable within these destructive habits, only to literally be consumed by them, there's the striving for nostalgia and "how things used to be" but no matter what you do it'll still be different, there's the representation of what generative a.i. is via the still-lifes being all distorted and their innards being just grey slop. Many lenses can be used to examine this movie and its fantastic!

🟡I love the explanation of this interpretation of the Rooms being essentially generation loss (thank you ranboo for teaching me that term). Copies of Copies of Copies until its an incoherent echo of what you started with. Describing a dog to someone who's never seen one, then asking them to draw it.

Ehhh

🟡I liked the pacing for the most part, but near the end it feels like it jumps in speed kinda unnaturally, as well as gaining some slasher/thriller elements that don't really fit right

🟡I also would've liked to see the actual "descent into madness" that Clark evidently went through. It feels like we jumped from him being relatively sane if spooked to having had a full mental breakdown

🟡genuinely Kane could've made it 3 or even 4 hours and I would've sat and watched through it, would be so peak and also allow all the lacking arcs to be more fulfilled. I've heard Kane has ideas he's kept to himself so he can make more movies so I'm sure these and other things will be fleshed out, but it'd still be nice for the movie to be better self-contained

Weaknesses

🟡Theres something to be said about the only black character ending up being depicted as insane, violent, cannibalistic-adjacent, etc. I honestly only thought about it after I saw someone else point it out but... yeah. Wouldn't even be as much of a thing if there were other black characters because, obviously, just cuz your skin is one color or another doesn't automatically make your a saint or sinner. It's an internal biases thing, I doubt it was intentional but it still sucks thats as much as im gonna touch on that, I'll leave anything further for actual POC to discuss and decide on

🟡I would've liked if we got to know Mary a bit more, cuz clearly we're meant to have a connection with her during the end of the movie but it feels... lacking. We know of her but we barely have a chance to Know Her, if that makes sense