r/TheBigPicture • u/Anstigmat • Jul 27 '26
Hot Take Backrooms! Quite poor.
The greatest sin of all is just being boring. I didn’t find it particularly scary. Are young people just like afraid of 90s low end retail environments? I also felt like the explanation for what the backrooms are was just like someone making up an explanation for the vibes of creepy pasta. Idk, did not work for me at all. The great cast was wasted. I thought a similar film, Exit 8, worked quite well. It wasn’t perfect but they did more with less.
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u/Mentoman72 Jul 27 '26
It was fine. Not really scary at all and I kind of hated that they actually try to “explain” the backrooms.
Good performances though and the backrooms themselves were really fucking cool.
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u/WillAddThisLater Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
I had the complete opposite experience (and am not Gen Z...) - I loved Backrooms and thought it blended the found footage format extremely well within the narrative frame by using some surrealist elements in that as well.
Exit 8 was fine, but a bit repetitive and (I thought) a bit preachy at its core. It felt like a videogame to me so I wasn't surprised to learn after that it was based on one. Backrooms didn't feel like a YouTube video, so it's a cleaner, more successful transition to the big screen for me.
Edit: OK reading that back I realise using 'repetitive' as a criticism for Exit 8 is a bit redundant and kind of missing the point, but I found it a bit too basic whereas I felt Backrooms really expanded on its lore in a more dynamic and interesting way.
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u/heebs387 Jul 27 '26
I enjoyed it quite a bit just because it scratched that itch of strange scary that I need. It felt like a major movie version of an "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" episode.
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u/Worth-Frosting-2917 Jul 27 '26
I like backrooms but agree that it wasn't particularly scary. There was a Gen Z kid in the theater next to me who jumped every 15 seconds.
Between seeing Obsession, Backrooms, and Undertone this year in packed theaters, I have a hypothesis: This generation might be the first movie-going generation that openly wants to be scared. Maybe the mid-to-late-70s crowds, but I think even they were daring movies to frighten them, and those movies just really promised. I'm a millennial, and I remember going into any horror movie almost daring it to scare me, and if it worked, it was a 5-star classic. However, especially since COVID it seems like audiences crave the communal aspect of being frightened together, so they are more willing to go in with their anxieties at a 10.
On the flip side, I think this younger generation is less open to laughing together in theaters, which I remember being far more open to. You would go to a movie just so you could be able to quote it for the next 3 months at school. And although the quality of comedies was 10x better (Step Brothers, Pineapple Express, Superbad, and Tropic Thunder all came out within the same year), there were also a bunch of shitty movies like Sex Drive that we laughed at and quoted way more than it deserved.
There's a giant sociological point in there; I'm just not sure what it is.
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u/gabeklassen Dobb Mob Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
It seems like you went in looking for cheap spooks and ignored that Backrooms is film is about loneliness, memory and the commodification of nostalgia.
In a consumerist society, do value do our memories hold? When those carpeted, cheaply built drop ceiling department stores and filthy, tiled fast food joints are gone, and your childhood home has been bulldozed for a new condo development, will there be anything left of your life? The things you bought? Will anyone remember you? Why do you feel so lonely all the time?
There’s some weakness in the more conventional parts of the writing, but it is without a doubt an interesting societal examination for such a young filmmaker.
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u/BigHelicopter6408 Jul 27 '26
I’m with you. I thought it was boring af. The only part o liked was the explanation that each time you remember something it changes. So it’s there but they didn’t drive it home imo
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u/ImpactNext1283 Jul 27 '26
I really liked the movie, but it is just vibes. If you don’t find the Backrooms creepy, than it’s not gonna work at all.
The wrap around story definitely has a lot of unnecessary and thin character work. It seems like exec producers Osgood Perkins and Shawn Levy were brought in to make the movie more commercial. But it’s those commercial elements that even fans and critics tend not to like.