MY opinion of Backrooms (2026)

Instructions

SPOILERS!!!!!!!! The first few minutes open up with Naren Warne, an ASYNC explorer, supposedly lost in the Backrooms, or at least separated from his group. Fortunately, he finds this little operation space with a few crappy radios, and tries contacting anyone for help. As he makes his way through a narrow space to investigate something, I couldn't help but notice a bunch of items down there replicated by the Backrooms to look like Clark's store? Because supposedly the Backrooms copies literally everything in humanity. So why are banners, items, and furniture from Clark's store so used throughout this movie? Unless it means that his store is some sort of hotspot opening for the Backrooms to hook onto the real world, just like Async, and there would be some sort of connection like the part of space where Async is operating is just really near that Cap'n Clark hotspot. Also, poor birds. It probably happens often, birds running into walls and teleporting to yellow hell. I loved the choice of the found footage-ness. Pays great tribute to Kane's original series! We get a bit of context to Mary's life. Overall, the show's telling us that Mary was a victim of abuse as a child, and locked indoors by her mentally insane mother, who was later taken away. I loved the Caretaker music in the background for that scene! And Mary's trying to break free of her past, and it's plenty hard for her. She keeps a rock from her childhood home's driveway, which she uses to save her life later on. We discover that Clark is a failing furniture store owner who really wants to pursue architecture, and also had a pretty bad divorce. That's why he's getting therapy from Dr. Mary Kline. Through the movie, he brings up his ex-wife and how he 100% thinks she was in the wrong, and continues getting mad about it. Even though the movie doesn't explicitly say this, I believe he probably was very abusive? I mean, he can barely control his attitude. See how he reacted to Kat's death? No sympathy, just frustration that she couldn't accept his new life. Anyways, Clark keeps getting bills around his lights constantly flickering around in the night, driving him crazy. He also turns out to be living in his furniture store. One night, he makes his way to the basement and promptly finds the Backrooms in the back wall. Any ordinary person would have a seizure, or at least in my case. Clark must've been pretty resilient or something, cause he got that nerve to explore deeper even after seeing a dead bird, hearing a weird giant thing, and even stole a stool at the last second! Clark goes to Mary, who doesn't really understand what's happening, and I guess he gets really mad and storms off, telling her that he'll prove the Backrooms is real. When he goes back with Kat and Bobby, the pile of furniture in the first room is lessened a lot, which I found funny because Clark probably kept coming in there to bring back to his store. If you hadn't noticed when Bobby picked up the End Apartheid shirt (He did do bad substances, but at least he was aware of Apartheid and supported against it!), he was pretty freaked out because that was the exact same shirt he was currently wearing. (RIP) Clark picking up the camera and filming was absolutely insane. The part with the Christmas and Poolrooms biomes certainly was well made! And the two still lifes appearing? Clark eventually calls Mary and tells her he's opened a new window or something like that, and that he'll be disappearing forever. Mary eventually goes to his store and finds the Backrooms. I forget what part of the movie it was but it was when Phil was with his family. I don't get it---you have a whole family, a life to live, and he's chosen to invest his life and risk it every day to go into that labyrinth. ASYNC truly got some guts there. Anyways, Mary gets captured by Clark after entering and tied to a chair where a particularly disturbing scene involving hair, therapy, Kat's head in a fridge, and a dangerous kitchen utensil. Then Clark gets like devoured by Evil Clark, who chases Mary. The entire chase sequence was beautiful in my opinion, though I think they dragged out the sleeping gas room scene to make more suspense. Anyways, Mary, with a conveniently broken ankle, uses a rock to beat the entity's head and pull herself into a narrow corridor, where a panicked ASYNC employee sprays her at full speed with sleeping gas. I can't blame him. Anyways, she gets saved by ASYNC, and Phil talks to her about their company, and they used to make MRI machines I think? Anyways, they're definitely setting up a franchise around this soon. I hope ASYNC doesn't like make her disappear or something. I guess the Backrooms just keeps duplicating stuff from the real world like a faulty printer. I have a theory it might be a modern version of Daedalus's Labyrinth, or some sort of alien simulation or AI takeover, but I'm thinking too deep. Overall, 9/10 for not enough content, I wish they had more cool biomes!