Backrooms (2026) was a phenomenal combination of psychological horror, commentary on AI art, and the concept of spaces/buildings having a consciousness.
The film hit upon a lot of themes circling in my head as of late - namely, the comfort of staying the same, even if it destroys you and those around you; something inhuman trying to replicate human things (Us, anybody?); and surreal/liminal spaces for my own stories.
It is a must-see if slightly off-kilter things delight you, weird things make you lean in, and you’re ready to find something that’ll make your jaw drop.
Big post, because this movie hasn’t left my mind several weeks ongoing and I wanna talk about what the Backrooms means as a whole. Not a dig at anyone else’s thoughts on the matter, but I think this whole thing has so much more nuance that I’m desperate to not let go, and this is the post that got me going about it.
So, while I think the backrooms is great as a critical point against AI, both inferring from what I’ve read Kane talking about as well as what I’ve been thinking and gathering on this subject, the backrooms is just really well designed to be critical of a lot of things as reflection. It implores the ideas of exploration of the things we can’t really comprehend, it shows how vulnerable we are to the unknown - even in spite of our modern era, it shows how the things holding us back is ourselves more than anything else (whether that be through internal or external struggle).
To the point of being against AI, (spoilers ahead) I assume this derives primarily off of the Still Lifes, which I also see as a strong depiction for what AI has become; but it exists simultaneously as an excellent interpretation of how all things are viewed - in memory, in biased interpretation, in total misunderstanding, and continuous reinterpretation afterwards. The Backrooms remembers things on a larger, more definitive reinterpretation of what a thing is remembered as, and less as the dehumanizing ways that AI mindlessly generates from the scraps of our own works - this is why Pirate Clark feels different than the other Still Lifes, he’s the most accurate of any of them to finally reaching a point of recognition. It’s not artificial, it’s reinterpretation. He exists as another way of viewing the real Clark in a way that is both absurd and frighteningly accurate. It’s the moment that he’s clawing at Mary, with the fear in his eyes, that you can recognize Clark as he once was - monstrous, violent, and yet still afraid of being alone, maybe even of being vulnerable at all.
One of the things that Kane said that really stuck with me is that The Backrooms is a great backdrop for continuous interpretation, it’s a space begging to be filled. Adding in depictions of struggle, divorce, economic issues, politics, and everything that comes with this depiction of the Backrooms - it seems to work like magic in my eyes, because everything seems to just make so much sense in this context, and yet doesn’t really need to fit in at all. It’s become more than the labyrinth mythos it’s inspired by, but the charm of that has never left the series, it just exists still as the root of all else to follow.
