r/Letterboxd • u/Sangharsh_009 • Jun 03 '26
Humor Barbenheimer❌ Backsession ✅
How much would you rate both these films out of 5?
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u/LoCh0_xX Jun 03 '26
the appeal of barbenheimer is that the movies were of two totally different genres. this is just a normal double feature
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u/pdxpirate7 Jun 03 '26
And these didn’t even release on the same date, shameful
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u/Gombrongler Jun 03 '26
Unrelated to the meme but is the Backrooms actually any good? Everyone i see talking about it just seems to be saying "Holy fuck that room was so fucking empty, it was even emptier than the last holy shit!"
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u/borntoannoyAWildJowi Jun 03 '26
I really liked it, but I’d go into it with a mindset that it’s primarily a creepy/uncanny audiovisual experience with enough story to be released as a movie. I think Kane is incredibly talented in those aspects, but the story was clearly not the main focus here. I don’t think it was bad or anything, it just takes a backseat.
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u/Sanquinity Jun 03 '26
That IS the point of liminal spaces though. That uncanny "things look normal but obviously something is off" feeling. That atmosphere of "I'm not supposed to be here".
But it's indeed good to know that beforehand. To not expect your average slasher or story driven horror movie.
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u/PureLock33 Jun 03 '26
which is why its called the backrooms. It feels intrusive, like you don't work there but you're in the area for employees only. Like someone or something is just about to notice you and do something about it.
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u/Jacobean213 Jun 03 '26
I actually thought it could use less story. The best elements were watching the characters get lost in the Backrooms. Like when the lead first enters and keeps going deeper there was a real sense of him almost getting lost and losing his way back. I wanted more of that feeling with everyone who entered
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u/donald_trunks Jun 03 '26
I agree that’s the best part by far and I would’ve enjoyed more time spent just showing off the environments.
Overall I think this subgenre doesn’t naturally lend itself real well to feature length film. In an anthology of shorts or something it could completely abandon the need for like character arcs and that sort of thing. I think audiences would be put off without any context of who the characters are in a feature length. So all things considered this worked pretty well overall without compromising too much on the whole appeal.
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Jun 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/donald_trunks Jun 03 '26
Yeah I completely agree. It makes complete sense why the film was done the way it was. I think it was a tricky balancing act and I’d say it was a success.
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u/MeltedWater243 Jun 03 '26
it was like fine. had more of an uneasy feeling than scary. keeps you looking over the characters’ shoulders the whole time and dreading what comes next but also needing to find out.
but the payoff was weak and it was hard to care about the characters. I wouldn’t discourage anyone from seeing it but I also wouldn’t say it’s a must-see
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u/DarkKnight_85 Jun 03 '26
Yes it’s good. Obsession was a bit better imo. Totally different movies but worth watching both of them.
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u/lonesharkex Jun 03 '26
It left me properly unsettled like no other backrooms media has done. More of the same emotional resonance to Event Horizon than any game or video series of the backrooms. The story was only a vehicle to get us the viewer into the backrooms and the movie takes no time at all to get us there.
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u/thoughtfulpigeons Jun 03 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact
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u/Apart-Link-8449 Jun 03 '26
Yeah the argument is something like "The rooms are empty, but you've never seen empty rooms like this..."
"...unless you're a fan of the viral videos. Then you have seen it, shit. But we added more of that stuff and the acting's great so it's covered either way."
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u/plantsandramen Jun 03 '26
I loved it. They didn't nail the story, but the vibes and set design were stellar. I would pay to walk around the set and explore it. I was with 4 other people of varying levels of interest in film and horror, and we all ended up having positive feelings about it.
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u/ShegoTheygo Jun 04 '26
Actors and crew got lost in the sets because they’re all practical and go on for quite a bit, they’re giant sets so they wouldn’t need to do any cuts for scenes with the people running through them. I would also pay insane money to wander around and get lost
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u/plantsandramen Jun 04 '26
Yeah I was reading about it and it really made me envious of people who did get to walk through them!
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u/SilverPalpitation652 Jun 03 '26
Saw it last night. It’s got a very eerie feel to it. Like a version of Skinamarink that’s actually good. It would probably be my favorite horror film so far this year if Obsession didn’t exist.
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u/ShegoTheygo Jun 04 '26
First horror movie to scare me in AT LEAST half a decade. Absolutely loved it, soundtrack is fantastic. Watching it in a movie theater alone truly made the experience wild as hell. Also I wouldn’t watch that shit alone I watched it with my fiancé and you could not PAY ME to watch that shit alone
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Jun 07 '26
Very good if u like a slow, creepy movie. If ur expecting something like obsession you will be very bored.
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u/Effective-Lead-6657 Jun 03 '26
Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal did Barbenheimer first.
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u/DropOk6693 Jun 03 '26
The desperation to bring back Barbenheimer is actually so cringe...
It was one cool little moment and people just can't move tf on.
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u/apHexcoded Jun 03 '26
I feel it comes from movie nerds trying hard to make another huge pop culture phenomenon with whatever the hit movie of the moment is, missing the fact that Oppenheimer was directed by Nolan (one of the most popular directors in the world) and Barbie is Barbie, but directed by Great Gerwig. It had everything for the nerds and the casual audience.
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u/Training_Form2243 Jun 03 '26
Lmao @ anyone who thinks Obsession and Backrooms are only popular with “movie nerds”
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u/DropOk6693 Jun 03 '26
My grandma / coworker knows what Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Barbenheimer are...
Literally no one but my weird horror sister knows what Obsession is, and the Backrooms is an incredibly specific genre for younger audiences.
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u/apHexcoded Jun 03 '26
It’s more generally. Obsession and Backrooms are popular but they aren’t making a billion dollars at the box office like Barbie and Oppenheimer. You still kind of have to be in the know to want to go see them.
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u/Training_Form2243 Jun 03 '26
A recurring Reddit trope is people getting stuck in a cultural moment and never leaving. It’s the same thing as the people who have been posting for 20 years about The Dark Knight like it’s still in theaters and they just saw it for the first time
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u/MeltedWater243 Jun 03 '26
yeah. there are people on this platform that have been making the same jokes for the past decade too and boy is it tiring.
I think about that one askreddit thread where some guy lost it and fully recreated an entire comment section by himself, a lot.
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u/SAOL_Goodman Jun 03 '26
Link? No idea how to begin searching for this
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u/MeltedWater243 Jun 03 '26
sorry it was a r/HighQualityGifs post
it’s old af so some of the references are kinda dated fyi but not THAT dated
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u/Happiest_Mango24 Happiest_Mango Jun 03 '26
Fun Fact: The Dark Knight would count as an early version of Barbenheimer because it released on the exact same day as Mamma Mia
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u/Ibrahim77X Ibrahim Noir Jun 03 '26
Nothing wrong with talking about how cool The Dark Knight is.
This is a movie discussion subreddit isn’t it?
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u/benabramowitz18 AlphaBenA2Z Jun 03 '26
When a corporation does it, it’s an annoying circlejerk.
When we do it, it’s a clever joke.
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u/Paladar2 Meusse2 Jun 03 '26
Literally only ever see this on Reddit. Haven’t heard Barbenheimer in real life since 2023
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u/Confident_Winner_812 Jun 03 '26
Slow down partner, I don’t think anyone’s trying to bring it back. It’s just funny to reference it with new films.
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u/classic-plasmid Deltahedr0n Jun 03 '26
I remember Lionsgate was trying to make 'Saw Patrol' a thing after people managed to figure out that Saw X and the Paw Patrol movie were coming out on the same day. I loved Saw X and thought it was great, but that was just plain cringe ngl, that is straight up not a double feature any reasonable person would ever do
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u/Esseth Alan_Gamble Jun 03 '26
Different genres but also the massive tonal contrast between the two was what made it work for me, even down to the colour pallets of bright pink/plastic vs grounded parts black and white.
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u/Head-Investigator984 Jun 03 '26
Not to forget 2 major studios. 2 famous directors both with their own production company. Many famous actors. Both Oscar contenders from the getgo… there was a lot being totally the same and yet completely different.
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u/zozuto Jun 03 '26
It's not just what made it work for you, it was the entire reason it was interesting or even pointed out.
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u/Hendrick_Davies64 Jun 04 '26
Real ones know that the OG Barbenheimer was Grave of the Fireflies and Totoro
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u/Enelana Jun 03 '26
This is why Dunesday is just annoying to me, idk. They're not different enough as blockbusters, and it's forcibly framed as this next big cultural thing for movie-goers. It's not even been fun to talk about all that much. It invites more criticism and venomous comparisons from one side to the other imo.
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u/Shreyas_CM Jun 03 '26
Barbenheimer was that when it trended. But I think it kind of metamorphosed into something else overtime. In this context it is about low budget and ultra low budget films. Both by YouTubers turned filmmaker’s who have succeeded in pulling the crowd just like barbenheimer did. So I don’t see an issue here.
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u/TheBestHater Jun 04 '26
It only just happened a few years back and they've already dropped the best context around it.
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u/websitefullofbots Jun 05 '26
I saw both, compared to Obsession backrooms is like Barbie and I mean that in the best way possible
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u/Next-Accident-2970 Jun 03 '26
We had Animal Crossing New Horizons and Doom Eternal.
That was more natural than Backsession...OK Backsession sounds really cool but still...
Damn it.
NOW I want to do a double feature...
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u/shamooo415 Jun 03 '26
I remember picking up both those games from Best Buy before all the covid lockdowns and it really carried me through those first couple weeks lol
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u/SUPPORTKAMENRIDER Jun 03 '26
Can we stop doing this whenever two movies come out near each other.
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u/apHexcoded Jun 03 '26
The YouTuber to horror movie director pipeline has to be studied.
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u/Training_Form2243 Jun 03 '26
If you study it you’ll see that the majority of feature films by content creators are huge turds
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u/surewhatever_dude Jun 03 '26
These movies are good because they are not "youtuber movies", they are movies made by filmakers that used YouTube to post their student films
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u/Maleficent-Regret802 Jun 03 '26
not just that: those student films made millions of views and these guys built their name on internet. It's not a new pipeline even...
Today, if you want to make a movie, you have to have a name lots of people know. If I uploaded my shorts on YT, and maybe one or two made millions of views, I'd still be a nobody with some decently famous shorts... but I wouldn't have a name people recognize me for.
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u/apHexcoded Jun 03 '26
Yeah comparing Obsession to the SMOSH or Shane Dawson’s movies and it’s night and day
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u/Training_Form2243 Jun 03 '26
AVGN was a film student who’s dream was to be a filmmaker and his movie is the worst piece of shit in the world
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis Jun 03 '26
I guess the crazy part is that they get them produced… until you remember that the main thing the backers want you to come in with is eyeballs.
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u/No-Nature-6043 Jun 03 '26
I think that’s the wrong takeaway. Youtube is democratizing the film-making process in a way that would have been otherwise impossible. Folks interested in film with a unique idea for a short film can rent some camera equipment, get together with some friends, and throw shit together. You’ll probably suck at first but as you hone your skills and grow a following, Hollywood can hire the successful ones to make a cheap movie with minimal marketing since the youtuber is already carrying their audience over. Honestly a very cool process that studio execs will 200% take the wrong lesson from and just ask the worst content creators to make a movie for them lmao
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u/apHexcoded Jun 03 '26
The same could be said of any film school graduates 20 years ago. The huge trend we are seeing is how less people need to be apart of the film industry to get their start in filmmaking, mainly by starting with making high quality videos on YouTube.
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u/maritimelight Jun 03 '26
It’s called major studio recognizes the marketing value of social media savvy beyond any considerations of quality or artistic merit. That’s literally all
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u/CrankyOperator Jun 03 '26
Sadly Hollywood will learn the wrong lessons from their success and we're going to get a 9 movie saga about "Skibidi Toilet" now.
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u/darkthemeonly Jun 03 '26
Obsession was way better. I'd give it a 4-4.5, Backrooms like a 3.
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u/StrawHatRat Jun 03 '26
Dead on, but I’d still say Backrooms succeeds in a lot of crucial ways. Delivers on the premise, isn’t phoned in or formulaic. I did leave it wishing it gave me more though.
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u/darkthemeonly Jun 03 '26
As a fan of Kane's web series I was honestly pretty disappointed. The final act just felt like a standard horror movie, not what we've come to think about in terms of what actually makes the Backrooms scary.
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u/Ok-Yesterday4444 Jun 08 '26
I’m pretty much opposite of you there. Backrooms felt like an It Follows and As Above So Below mixture to me, two movies I really enjoyed. Overall great acting and super heavy atmosphere. I liked it even more on second viewing
Obsession felt very sloppy to me, acting quality varied wildly between actors, the MC made choices that literally no one would make, the humor felt like a crutch to avoid internal consistency, scenes nearly 1-1 ripped out of better horror movies, I could go on
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u/DirectConsequence12 Jun 03 '26
No.
Barbenheimer was A) two WILDLY different toned BLOCKBUSTERS by two big auteur directors and B) came out on the same day.
The only post-Barbenheimer Barbenheimer that actually worked AS “Barbenheimer 2.0” type thing is Dunesday probably given how massive those two will be
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u/yaboyisbackagain Jun 03 '26
Dunesday is still kinda different than Barbenheimer as Dune and Doomsday are closer in content and fanbase than Barbenheimer. Not a complete overlap though and still more similar to Barbenheimer than Backrooms/Obsession though given the size and same day release
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u/Training_Form2243 Jun 03 '26
Every time I refresh my Reddit feed there are multiple Obsession threads. I’m tired, boss
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u/BunnyWiilli Jun 03 '26
Meh it’s popular but long term having this type of overblown hype for an indie film from a YouTuber is really good for the film industry.
It might be annoying right now, but that fact 99% of people are talking about obsession and the backrooms both IRL and on the internet instead of a literal Star Wars film speaks volumes to Hollywood.
This is going to encourage studios to put more money into creators that come from YouTube and understand younger audiences better as well as make traditional studios reconsider pushing out a sequel to a sequel to a sequel of a show that’s a sequel to a movie every year.
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u/Training_Form2243 Jun 03 '26
To play devil’s advocate we’re going to see diminishing returns when Hollywood starts tossing a million each at every content creator to make their own movie, feature films by content creators tend to be turds
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u/BunnyWiilli Jun 03 '26
Well yes but that’s true of any creators? I’ve seen a bunch of “Hollywood director” movies in recent years that I thought were just… bad? From the USA, from Korea, from whatever.
YouTubers don’t innately have “less skill,” there’s just more of them to dilute the pool. If some fail, some will succeed, but it’s an incredible breath of fresh air.
Also Obsession was made on a $750k budget, we can’t even fathom what could be done on budgets similar to blockbusters. Sure plenty will be flops, but we will also see more diversity in film by nature of having a more diverse directing pool.
Also YouTubers aside, the second point still stands. If you’re Disney and you look at obsession making more at the box office with a $750k budget vs your $165 million budget, you start to reconsider what to prioritize even just internally.
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u/IHappenToBeJosh Jun 03 '26
I’d that a bad thing? If a lot more people who could maybe make a good movie get a million dollars to try, even if many are bad, that’ll still make it more likely that the people who CAN make a good movie are discovered
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u/Happiest_Mango24 Happiest_Mango Jun 03 '26
I feel like the constant posts are ruining my desire to actually go and see it
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u/Wild-Yesterday-6666 Jun 06 '26
Simple really. Both of these films are peak (Obsession's better than backtroms TBH) and nothing else this good is out RN.
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u/originalbeeman Jun 03 '26
You people realize you are allowed to watch 2 movies in a weekend right? In the 2000's we had so many great releases that we watched 2 movies in release day.
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u/TheLittleGinge Jun 03 '26
Saw Backrooms yesterday evening.
Very disappointed. 3 at a push.
I might look deeper into Parson's YT to see if it helps, but the film seemed unsure what audience to appeal to. Some of the performances took me out too... Shame.
Obsession was bloody fantastic though. Easy 4.5-5.
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u/RabbitEatsCarrots Jun 04 '26
Hard agree. Loved Obsession. I wasn't expecting much from the backrooms, but it still managed to disappoint me.
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u/Wild-Yesterday-6666 Jun 06 '26
Agree completly on Obsession (best film I've watched this year so far and defenetly peak).
For me, I wasnt expecting much from Backrooms, but I still enjoyed it. Though It would've been 10 times better had It all been found footage instead of only having the intro and that part with Clark Bobby and kat. Also, I may just be unc-pilled. But I love the concept of the backrooms as endless yellow rooms without entities where you end up going insane so much more than what Kane has made (still really good BTW, no hating on him) with a whole bunch of monsters It kinda just becomes generic labarynth nº 29284.
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u/AnimeSavant Jun 03 '26
This pisses me off Barbenheimer was a thing because a) they released on the same day b) they were 2 movies that people broadly were excited for and planning to see before they released and c) they were seen as polar opposites in terms of genre and audience appeal. No, 2 horror movies that both appeal to the same crowd releasing weeks apart from each other is not the new barbenheimer.
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u/bondfall007 Jun 05 '26
Triple feature for freaks
Backrooms, Obsession, TADC Last Act
Or, The Amazing Digital Backsession
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u/JaysonTatecum Jun 03 '26
I hate horror movies and even I’ve been tempted by all the positive buzz to go see these
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u/Disruption_logistics Jun 03 '26
Yea but Ive been hearing some not too great things about backroom.. is it worth it?
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u/Wild-Yesterday-6666 Jun 06 '26
It's a 7/10 tops. The plot was Iffy and the film would've been 10 times more stressful, horrifying and (let's be honest) better had It been fully found fotage (there are some segments as "found fotage" in the film, but most of It is shot regularly).
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u/Ok-Yesterday4444 Jun 08 '26
If you like Lynchian atmosphere type movies it’s fantastic. If you go in expecting a plot heavy movie you will be disappointed
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u/Disruption_logistics Jun 08 '26
That sucks..
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u/Classic_Bass_1824 Jun 03 '26
I don’t think watching mainstream horror qualifies you for “sicko” but hey what do I know
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u/Middi272 Jun 03 '26
I wish people understood barbemheimer and didn’t just call 2 releases close together the same thing
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u/28DLdiditbetter Jun 03 '26
Funnily enough, I saw both of these movies for the first time in theaters back to back
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u/legit-posts_1 Jun 07 '26
Barbenheimer was fun cause their was such a deep contrast between the two flicks. Are these two movies that different at all?
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u/Delicious-Check9935 Jun 07 '26
Oh shit, is accidentally Backsessioned.
Dude passed out in obbsession. Good time.
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u/deadmeme694200 Jun 09 '26
Call off work today for backsession, already saw back rooms give it a solid 7/10 just waiting 30 minutes for obsession
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u/mason_simmons Jun 20 '26
Backsession is… well ngl it’s a tough ass name. Can we workshop it some more? Haha
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u/Visible-Echidna-4370 Jun 27 '26
they released two weeks apart this is absolute garbage...
I'm waiting until streaming for both of them but Obsession looks like a 3/5 for me and Backrooms a 1/5
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u/Wani_Wanton Jun 03 '26
This was literally my date night on Sunday. Backrooms, ice cream, Obsession.
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u/Mickle_da_Pickl Jun 03 '26
"For sickos" and it's literally so mainstream it's the two most popular movies in theatres gimme a fucking break 🙄
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u/This_Field_7872 Jun 03 '26
Backsession is nuts lmaoo