EP 122: Backrooms, Obsession, Ladies First

So let's start with a film that has just dropped in cinemas over the weekend, uh, which we were both looking forward to, to varying degrees, 'cause it's based on quite a long-running internet, uh, film series and kind of like written ideas as well, based on liminal spaces.

It's called Backrooms.

Will you read the synopsis? 'Cause I think it's somewhat different to what people might have seen elsewhere on YouTube if they've seen those films.

Mm-hmm.

But expands on it in an interesting way.

In 1990, a strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom, and after a therapist's patient disappears into this dimension beyond reality, she must venture into the unknown to save him.

Okay.

So yeah, so it's kind of like...

It's, it's such a strange film, isn't it? Because it's not really specifically and clearly about anything.

Hmm.

You know? It's like often a horror film is about, oh, you've woken up this curse, or you've...

You know, this thing's coming for you.

This is more kind of true to, to its very nature, I guess.

The idea of it being a weird, disorienting space.

In a way, the film is somewhat like that experience as well.

Yes.

It's more about a feeling that you get when you see something that feels almost uncanny valley, like it shouldn't exist, but it does.

So-

You find yourself somewhere and you think, "Where, kinda where exactly am I?"

And it almost feels like you're caught in a memory.

Like, there's a feeling of nostalgia that you can't quite place, and I think that's the origin of the concept of Backrooms.

You know, I think it stemmed from a lot of kind of Reddit and YouTube content from, I kind of...

Kane Parsons, in a Q&A, was saying around 2016, but I think it actually dates earlier than that.

'Cause it reminds me of-

It might have started earlier.