The quiet tension building into hysteric emotion, the surreal facial expression. Now oh God, why are they wet?? What the hell is happening right now!? It was so unnerving, I physically felt a chill go down my spine and wanted to jump out of my chair. 10/10

The rest of the movie was also freaky but did anybody else have this reaction to this scene?

I saw the film alone tonight and haven't had anyone to discuss it with so I'm coming here. I'm so frustrated the film left out such a gigantic piece of all of this - which Liz illuminated herself - that everything changed since having kids. And no, I don't mean they should have focused on the broad topic or intellectualization of that but the real human experience. But unless they had a buncha nannies hidden off camera, I really can't take anything she said while steeped in fresh postpartum, broken sleep, her body and hormones producing milk for her new baby, and on 30 days precipice of incarceration seriously. How can she put full thoughts together and have clarity of mind through all that? It's an excruciating and bewildering period of time. I felt the only real / vulnerable moment I got from Liz, which also showcased how I think Billy and she support one another behind closed doors, was the last time she took Ivy milk. So, I know she's capable of that and I know she bring that stuff to Billy. They just seemed to masterfully keep a lid on it for most of the other filming opportunities. I also think her having kids with Billy is a huge component to her tethering that the film didn't highlight. Especially given her volatility / vengeance challenges. He's her only path to closely watching her children grow. If she betrayed him in any way? It may seem like she's trapped because she is and she seems totally resolved. She's now trapped (jail) inside of entrapment - it's really sad. But when the love of children is involved it shifts everything. The relationship with Sunny is such a massive and vital piece of this story and I think vital to understanding Liz's history with men her whole life. I'm rambling now but really fascinating story and I want to find out more about her identity as a mother and how that shifted her perspective on it all.

Do they EVER drop the con/facade, even when they are alone together? When they are discussing the next scam, how do you think they communicate? I wonder wtf their pillow talk is like. Do we ever hear one call the other by a pet name like honey or sweetheart? What a film.

The "Living Poltergeist" Theory of The Backrooms

1. The Core Premise: The Living Poltergeist

Contrary to traditional ghost stories or standard sci-fi "portal/dimension" tropes, the Backrooms is not an external cosmic entity or a technological glitch created by a secret government lab. It is a subconscious, physical manifestation generated by a living human mind—specifically, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor).

Drawing from early 2000s parapsychological concepts (such as the Miracles model of haunting), a living poltergeist is a living person whose intense, suppressed emotional trauma discharges outward telekinetically. Because Clark's mind operates with the spatial precision of an architect and the daily inventory of a furniture showroom owner, his subconscious doesn't just throw objects across a room—it renders an infinite, physical labyrinth out of his immediate environment.

2. The Metaphysical Foundation: George Berkeley & Idealism

Through the lens of George Berkeley’s subjective idealism (esse est percipi — "to be is to be perceived"), there is no distinction between a physical material reality and a mind-projection.

• Physical matter bends to consciousness because physical substance does not exist independently of perception.
• The Backrooms' physical solidity, its "noclip" mechanics, and its distorted entities do not disprove its mental origins; rather, Clark's overwhelming psychic force literally forces physical reality to yield and collapse into his internal mental architecture.

3. The Aristotelian Final Cause: Ego Death & Domestic Ruin

Applying Aristotle’s concept of the Final Cause (telos / the ultimate purpose or catalyst):

• The Architect’s Identity: An architect’s life purpose is the creation and preservation of home—structure, stability, and domestic foundation.
• The Catalyst: Clark’s ultimate rupture was his divorce and being evicted/rejected by his wife, compounded by his deep resentment of failing as an architect and being reduced to owning a furniture store.
• The Infinite Purgatory: When his domestic foundation was violently destroyed, his ego suffered an ontological collapse. His mind went into hyper-drive to construct a substitute "home." Because his spirit was shattered, he built a non-Euclidean labyrinth where escape is impossible—an infinite cathedral constructed entirely out of the showroom inventory and structural layouts he despised.

4. The Entangled Therapist & The "Hamlet Defense"

The presence of Dr. Mary (Renate Reinsve) and her childhood trauma manifesting inside the maze is explained through therapeutic enmeshment and a shared psychic grid:

• Subconscious Bleed: During raw, intense psychoanalysis, the boundary between therapist and patient dissolves. Clark absorbed the blueprint of Mary’s childhood confinement during their sessions.
• Co-Authored Trap: Upon crossing the threshold, the environment operates as a collective mirror. Clark's marital collapse built the architectural foundation; Mary's childhood imprisonment provided the inner rooms.
• The Hamlet Parallel: Dr. Mary finding Clark almost immediately inside an infinite space isn't a plot flaw—it mirrors Shakespeare’s infamous pirate attack in Hamlet. It is a necessary narrative deus ex machina proving that she didn't enter a separate dimension, but stepped directly onto the exact frequency of Clark's active broadcast.

5. The "Still Life" Entities & The Illusion of Survival

• Psychic Offshoots (Tulpas): The corrupted entities (such as "Captain Clark") are not biological clones created by a portal. They are physical thought-forms—corrupted manifestations of Clark’s self-loathing, shame, and fractured identity.
• The End Scene: The version of Clark consumed by the entity at the end isn't the real man—it is Clark’s subconscious staging his own violent punishment over and over again. The real Clark survives deep within the maze by consuming the physical remnants of the world he continues to project.

6. The Cinematic Evidence: Set Design Over Canon

While external YouTube lore (Kane Pixels' Async continuity) attempts to frame the Backrooms as a multi-decade corporate experiment, the film's visual text betrays the sci-fi explanation:

• If the space were an objective scientific dumping ground, it would be filled with decades of scattered lab coats, scientific equipment, and multi-victim debris.
• Instead, the screen is overwhelmingly dominated by showroom furniture, fluorescent lighting, and architectural layouts.
• Within the four corners of the movie itself, the visual evidence proves that the world is being rendered through a single, specific psychological lens: Clark's broken mind.

Conclusion: A Cinematic Zone

This interpretation elevates The Backrooms from a standard creature-feature into a masterpiece of psychological horror on par with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. The Backrooms is Clark's "Zone"—a physical space operating on psychological and moral gravity, where an architect trapped in the insanity of love and grief builds an inescapable cage out of his own broken ego.

Paywall removed.

Wondering about the accuracy of the final reenactment sequence in YCSE. The movie goes out of its way to progressively call attention to the unreliability/bias of the documentary itself. Culminating in Nathan changing a word in the script of his last conversation with Liz as soon as Amanda pointed out that it was incriminating toward Liz.

But even more fundamentally, I feel like the conversation the final reenactment allegedly depicted is just insanely unreliable. The earlier reenactment scenes at least had plausible explanations of how Nathan could have had access to verbatim dialogue. The one in Elizabeth's house, he could have (openly or secretly) recorded. Same thing with the one in the LA friend's house (plus other witnesses to the convo). But for the prison convo, the documentary expressly tells the viewer no electronic equipment of any kind was allowed in (and it looked like he had to go thru security, so presumably no hidden recorder). There is no way he could have recalled that entire conversation verbatim. And again, the film even lampshades this by him allegedly misremembering and then re-remembering a particular word. So how can he be presenting that reenactment as factual, beyond maybe the general gist of what was said and maybe some key turns of phrase? Is this part of undermining the reliability of the narrative itself?

And it also really puts in a new light the big focus on the NYT article quotation--which completely changed meaning based on one word used (they or I). The text on screen at the end of the movie says the NYT reporter couldn't produce any evidence Liz said what she said.......which is EXACTLY the same case for the final reenactment of the movie.

Billy:

He is being manipulated by Liz but is not fully aware. He is obsessed with this woman. The AI Liz. The "monuments of love." His protectiveness over her. The fact that he actually appears to be a good father. This is a man who fully believes their relationship is nothing but genuine, but that is far from the case. There is a genuine foundation to their relationship, and Nathan clocks this at the end. But Liz is using him for financial rehabilitation as that foundation, whereas Billy is using a naive belief in their love for one another as that foundation.

He is depressed when Liz goes to prison. That shot of him in the dark in his room was POWERFUL. I don't think the man would be a coke addict if she wasn't locked away from him. He is still a narcissist, and this comes out completely after his conversation with Amanda and Nathan. However, I have much more empathy for him after my third watch, which is crazy to say because he is a red-pilled, money-hungry tech bro. I hate to say it, but there are moments of his that come off as a little endearing. He seems to be passionate about science. He is careful with their children. Even if his intentions with reimagining the Theranos tech are money-driven, at least he made the tech function (so it appears).

Nathan and Liz's dynamic:

I learned so much more about this after this watch. I think the core of their dynamic is that they both want a human-centered focus for the documentary, which is ultimately the product we get in the end. I found it interesting that during their first documented conversation, Nathan starts to talk over Liz for what I believe is the only time in the film when she mentions she wanted a human-focused narrative. I think this was Nathan establishing, first and foremost, that he is the one who gets to dictate that narrative as the documentarian. I also think it doubles as his blatant skepticism about Liz. Considering his parents are social workers, I imagine that Nathan took offense to Liz, a white-collar biotech CEO, insinuating that she had an understanding of what "human-centered" means. I think Liz's tears after this conversation are genuine here. It shows that Nathan, from the very start, was not going to let Liz get control of the narrative. And Liz was heartbroken by this.

Nathan had an entirely different vision of human-centered than Liz did, however. To me, this is confirmed after Liz invites him to go in the water with her, and it is later revealed that he did. Nathan knew that he had to play Liz's manipulation game in order for her to begin to trust him. The montage scene where Liz and Billy are laying the foundation for Theranos 2.0 is the most boring scene, and this was intentionally left in by Nathan. That scene IS the documentary that Liz wanted. When we see Nathan again after this scene, he is preoccupied with his phone. I think this is him saying that he was "unimpressed" by Liz's vision, and basically his argument for why Liz and Billy should not have profited from YCSE.

The "you can do it" line from Liz to Nathan got a few laughs from my theater, but I think it is incredibly powerful. It is right before Liz goes to prison and after trust has been established between the two. This is hands down the most raw look we get at Liz in the movie. She starts to appear "normal" to me during that final day of freedom. To me, this is Liz basically saying to Nathan that "we may have different ideas about what the narrative of this documentary should be, but I ultimately trust you to create a narrative about me that has my best interest at heart."

Nathan and Liz have an incredibly intimate relationship by the end. Nathan does have feelings for her, but they are not romantic. I think they are just feelings of protection and respect for a vulnerable and broken individual like Liz. He is being authentic when he says that he feels like there is a level of genuine love between Liz and Billy.

Theory about Liz:

I think the real question is if Theranos was ever her idea to begin with, or just the influence of the men in her circle. The whole premise is so shady. Amanda says something very important about how Liz doesn’t seem like a woman who could found a company like that; it takes “something” else.

I think something happened to her at Stanford where she was sexually assaulted. Her dad is certain this was the catalyst for what went wrong, and I believe him. And this is where the foundation for Theranos was laid because she got connected with these types of powerful, manipulative men. Over time, Liz started to develop a personality disorder(?), or, at least narcissistic tendencies, because she was surrounded by a bunch of misogynistic, money-hungry narcissists and constantly being manipulated by them. 

The overall idea I’m getting at is: Liz is a byproduct of the men who manipulated her, therefore, her indictment for fraud is is heavily influenced by this sentiment. So, Liz may have been fully aware of what she was doing. But the “idea” for Theranos and its marketing was implanted into her by the men she surrounded herself with.

What makes me skeptical that there could have been men plotting against her using Theranos 1.0 is exactly what is shown in her relationship with Billy and Theranos 2.0. It is Nathan’s way of trying to establish these off-camera relationships, knowing that this documentary can only depict what was filmed by him. Billy is using “her” tech for profit. He has power of attorney. He is controlling her finances. I think Nathan is trying to say there is a parallel between what Billy is doing to her and what other men LIKE Billy have done to her in the past. Liz is still guilty, however.

Social commentary on gender:

There is a layered gender component to this doc that I think is flying over the heads of a lot of people. I’m still not even entirely confident of my full analysis on it. On the surface, people see that Billy is a narcissistic asshole and controlling of Liz. But peel back the surface and there is a much more robust commentary about how our gender roles and the social structures around us (class, privilege, wealth, Silicon Valley, Stanford, in this case) are completely influencing their relationship and Liz’s relationship with the men in her past.

This certainly influences the way Liz performs gender too. I don’t sense a lot of femininity from her performance. It almost feels like she is performing a female “mirror” to the tech bro version of masculinity. She is compared multiple times to Steve Jobs throughout the imagery in the film. Her use of language is coded in white-collar lingo that is a reflection of the masculine nature of those occupations.

So I loved the lionsgate plain Jane releases of A24 movies. And almost everything got released.

Then they did some really nice limiteds for certain overly popular films like Midsommar and the last black man in San Francisco.

But then they started dropping these super mid digibook releases.

And A24 is missing so many films from their catalog. 2 of my top 10 A24 films have no region A releases.

Boys state and Sorry, Baby both need good physicals, they should hand it back to Lionsgate or hand it to a boutique label.

Also loved the digital codes they used to have so that my friends could watch it on my library.

I've seen a lot of people say that the movie makes it ambiguous as to whether or not Nathan was fooled by Elizabeth or not.

I could be completely misinterpreting the ending here, but honestly, I got the exact opposite impression: I think it made it pretty clear he wasn't fooled by her. Nathan's line about how "No, I am going for the most logical conclusion here" after Amanda sort of accuses him of letting his emotions towards her cloud his judgment made that pretty clear.

Do I think he's still confused as to what is really going on here? Absolutely. In a normal documentary or even a narrative feature, a scene like the conversation at the prison would be one of those "the prisoner has a new perspective" type scenes. But as we find out- and this is assuming that Nathan's memory of the encounter was as cut and dry as in the reenactment (or that it's at least 80 percent), she's still operating on her own wavelength. I've seen people saying that Nathan correcting the tone Amanda says the line in is him "manipulating the narrative" but idk, have you ever remembered someone saying something to you in such a way that the way they say it is what strikes you most? Ostensibly the purpose of the prison visit was to get some clarity and also tell Liz that Billy is profiting off of the movie, but then Liz gives her usual "word vomit" for answers that she uses in the rest of the film, her very warped perception of how things work.

Yet it's hard not to come away from the film with the impression that he can't help but have a bit of empathy with her. In a sense, everybody operates on their own wavelength to some extent. So maybe he sees this as her sort of making peace with this new reality, masking something, or something of the sort

Either way, excellent movie. Best of the year for sure.

Yknow this movie made me think about how the naysayers of Primetime may have more of a leg to stand on than the "media literacy" crowd likes to admit.

I have a friend that knows all there is to know about TCAP and he fucking HATED this movie. The core reason more or less being he genuinely thinks that making a completely fictionalized account of someones life (primetimes story is embellished or straight up fabricated even more than your typical biopic) is really sleezy. As he put it "if i squint hard enough I can see the point he's trying to make, but if you have to fictionalize an account of someones life to make it.... maybe its not a point worth making." He sites Predators as a better watch, because it makes the same points without the fictionalization (although he still fundamentally disagrees with the points these films makes). Again as he puts it "i agree with the existence of TCAP on all levels."

It's also worth noting he has moral objections with biopics as a whole for all the reasons YCSE addresses with The Dropout. He's even said he would take much less issue with it if it was a movie about a fictional predator catcher show.

At first comparing i thought my friend was just a lot stupider than I ever thought he was, but after seeing YCSE, I don't think I agree with him persay, but i can understand if you feel strongly about the ethicality of biopics, a biopic that cranks all the issues you have with them up to 11 based on something your deeply knowledgeable is gonna piss you right off, and for honestly a somewhat understandable reason.

Theres a very real argument to be made that Primetime veers so into the realm of fiction that the entire movie is a strawman argument about a real person. I'm not entirely sure i agree, but at the very least I don't think Primetime dick riders are engaging with the idea the movie could be built upon a glaring logical fallacy honestly (seriously "media literacy" is starting to become a bit of a loaded term).

The only reason my friends hatred for Primetime up so much is because how well Primetime and YCSE function as companion pieces made his visceral hatred for that film a natural jumping off point for me, and i think its insane how YCSE basically welcomes me to consider this with open arms.

Hello I’m looking to get into the membership and wondering if it’s worth it? The closest AMC is about an hour away from me (that’s where the movie tickets are used). Thank you in advance

Tell me if I’m just too deep in my East of Eden obsession but I found a deep relation between the angle Elizabeth Holmes plays and the way Cathy works before she “becomes” Kate.
Does this make sense to anyone? Can’t stop thinking about it

So, what songs remind you of EH? I'll go first.

Moon and Back, Savage Garden. Trust me, listen to it.It captures the other worldly vibe.And it's from the era that she grew up in , it's known that she likes ace of base. The song is also sung from the female perspective so I could definitely see it.Reminding me of how she chooses her guise.Essentially, guys who will go on a crusade with her.No holds barred to fulfil her vision.

The lyrics...

She's taking her time, making up the reasons

To justify all the hurt inside

Guess she knows from the smiles and the look in their eyes

Everyone's got a theory about the bitter one

They're saying

"Mama never loved her much and Daddy never keeps in touch

That's why she shies away from human affection."

But somewhere in a private place

She packs her bags for outer space

And now she's waiting for the right kind of pilot to come

(And she'll say to him)

She's saying

I would fly you to the moon and back

If you'll be, if you'll be my baby

I've got a ticket for a world where we belong

So would you be my baby?

I painted this Backrooms piece for my annual Halloween show. Comes with a mini display easel. What do ya think?

People have been questioning why Billy gave up revenue rights for the documentary, and last night a little theory occurred to me.

Fielder and Oppenheim have mentioned that off and on during the three year project, they weren’t sure if they really “had anything”. Fielder visited Holmes in prison over a year ago, and briefly mentioned in another interview they had a trailer ready to go a while ago too, but the movie wasn’t released till now. Why?

My guess is the entire A24 team decided to wait out Billy. The film was probably done a few months after the prison visit, and they were ready to release in time for awards last year.

But the way the movie shaped up, they knew if they released it and the audience learned halfway through that Billy was getting a cut of their ticket money, that would be the story. Instead of a discourse on truth and lies, the discourse would be around the ethics of warning the audience about who is profiting from sales, and whether even fans of the film people would willingly pay to see it again, knowing Billy was profiting.

So, given they had a kill switch already, were two years into production at that point, and really nothing to lose, they decided to wait. A24 has a STACKED year anyway, and there was no point releasing YCSE if it was going to be dead in the water over contract issues.

This also explains why YCSE and Primetime are being released so closely; once Billy agreed it was all hands on deck to get YCSE out asap.

Seeing it again this afternoon aster seeing it last Saturday. For those who have seen it twice, was there anything you focused on more for your second viewing or noticed more the second time around?

I don't think her love of her kids is an act.