I've been hooked on The Backrooms film by Kane Parsons (2026) and I don't have anyone I know to discuss it with in the depth and detail that I'm interested in discussing it, so I'm dumping here. **Heavy Spoilers Ahead** This will not be of any value to you if you haven't watched the movie.
First, I would like to say a little about why this film and related backrooms content on YouTube has drawn me in. The aesthetic of the unending liminal spaces reminds me of dreams I have had where I'm roaming in spaces that begin in familiar locations, but where I'm led in the dream into unknown parts of familiar locations. For example, in one recurring dream I had growing up, my dream began in part of my grandparents' basement, but there where parts of their basement that I knew exist in real life, but which I wasn't permitted to play in or explore. My dream explored imagined corridors within those spaces. So, there is something strangely familiar to me contained in the backspaces theme of wandering liminal spaces.
I also enjoy the creepy side of this content. It's not about violence or gore as much as the unknown factor that may be lurking around a corner. This content gives me goosebumps more than anything else.
Finally, I believe Kane Parsons has labored over a detailed and layered narrative that is artistically executed and internally consistent.
Observations from the Film and Reaction Viewers
This is a movie rewards attention to detail and to rewatching. I honestly didn't pay close attention the first time I watched, but I was intrigued enough to watch again and to watch other YouTube content related to theories and probably a couple dozen reaction videos. And now I've watched Backrooms the movie at least two more times.
The reaction videos (where people watch the film for the first time and comment/react) are interesting to me because there are certain things people tend to notice themselves on a first watch. Some things they get right. Some they get wrong. And there are also things that pop up nearly every time as questions while people are watching. Some people notice things that I missed.
There are two main characters in the film, Clark, who is a furniture salesman in a failed marriage who is seeking counseling/therapy from Mary, who is his therapist. The film does not slap viewers in the face with explanations, so viewers are left to piece together much of what is happening on their own.
The Girl (Young Mary)
One thing viewers are frequently confused about on a first viewing is the identity of the young girl. Some people pick up on it relatively quickly, but others are confused and think the girl was Mary's child and maybe she died. Mary has had trauma in her own life, but the little girl is a flashback to her own childhood, and the film reveals the source of her trauma later, Mary's mother who was suffering from some kind of paranoid delusions.
Employees and Store
There are two minor characters who are employees at Clark's furniture store, Kat and Bobby. I have a minor irritation with their wardrobe, only for the fact that the film is set in the 1990s (before Kain Parson's was born). I was a teen who was working in the 1990s and I find it hard to believe that there was any furniture store that employed kids in their late teens or twenties and let them dress in halter tops and flipflops or jeans.
Clark's store is also huge, but his inventory is very low. This is another thing that seems dubious to me. I've never seen a furniture store, especially one selling budget furniture, that wasn't tightly packed to utilize the floor space. This is not a major quibble, but it's odd. I'm guessing they did it to accommodate the final scene.
Observant viewers make note of Clark's wife, Barbara, in the scene where he's having a restless night with no sleep.
The Gateway and First Room
When Clark first discovers the portal into the backroom, I think every person I have seen watch the film has wondered if he'll be stuck back there permanently? When Clark reenters the store basement to verify that he's not trapped in there, people frequently wonder if it's still the same location or if it's a similar looking basement area. This hadn't occurred to me, but it's an apt question. People also wonder if the door will still work when Kat and Bobby are brought in for "research". I think they expect Clark to walk into the wall like an idiot while Bobby and Kat laugh.
Related to that first entry point, there is initially a pile of odd furniture in the room where Clark lands. I didn't pay much attention to it, but when he comes back with Bobby and Kat, the pile of furniture is considerably smaller, and when Mary enters later, all the furniture is completely gone. I didn't notice the change in those piles. I was impressed when people noticed the difference on the second incursion when Kat and Bobby are brought in.
Naren, Async, and the First Scene
I skipped over this because you have no context for it at first. The beginning of the film consists of a "found footage" type camera work. The character filming is in a hazmat suit and fleeing from the monster. In Clark's first foray into the backroom complex that we learn a little more about this individual when Clark discovers the bag that this person concealed. His name was Naren Warne. He works for a company called Async. One of the things that is interesting to me is how many people in the reaction videos seem to completely forget about that first scene. They have no idea what the bag that Clark finds is about or why it matters.
It seems like more viewers tend to notice the diminishing pile of furniture in the first room than those who notice that it seems like Clark has moved the pile in front of the door with the Async camera and cables as a barricade. This is one of the things I have questions about and will bring up in a later section.
The room where Naren dies is lined with the same tropical wallpaper that is used in the commercial sequence in Clark's store, though the wallpaper in the commercial shoot is just a single panel featuring the tropical scene. In the backrooms tropical wallpaper room, the whole room has that wallpaper ....and a locked door, unfortunately for Naren. The monster that kills Naren is definitely Pirate Clark. You can see his three-corner hat as he peers around the corner in the long hallway and when Naren is apprehended, there is a flash of the peg leg. This is interesting because Clark has not yet entered the complex.
It was amusing to me that I saw a couple of people who thought the caveman cutout figure was supposed to be Jesus.
The Throne Room
People recognize the throne in this room from the commercial scene earlier in the movie. I think only one person noticed that the flipflops were Kat's flipflops from that scene, but now they are embedded in the floor. I believe that the other pair of shoes there are Bobby's. The parrot from Clark's pirate costume is also there.
It was one of the hardcore theory channels that someone also pointed out that the throne in this room is tilted in the same direction it broke and fell in that commercial scene. This room is, interestingly, captures those elements from that previous experience in Clark's life.
First Exit
When Clark returns to the entry/exit room, he's first unable to find the gateway. First time viewers are almost always sure he's never getting out that way again, even though they saw him exit immediately after his entry. People frequently comment in the reaction videos that the doorway is closed now and he's stuck. People are also very curious about his return to get the stool. I don't know for sure what the screenwriter had envisioned in Clark's head for this moment, but it seems to me that Clark is most likely testing things to see if the things that appear material in the backrooms are still just as real in his other world. He's testing and experimenting. It was his first "research". People also speculate that Clark is thinking about taking furniture to his store to sell. I don't think that's his motivation here. Everything out of Clark's mouth at this point seems to be focused on unraveling the mysteries of this place (...or serving some other purpose which I will discuss later).
5150 and Second Therapy Session
Mary and Clark discuss "5150" in the second therapy session. This is apparently part of the California legal code used to institutionalize people who are believed to be potential harm to themselves or others. Clark is aware that his experiences are crazy sounding. The meaning of 5150 becomes apparent in context, but I was left wondering if that is part of the common vernacular in California. Clark has education and training in architecture but he's the one who first mentioned the term.
The dialogue in this scene is super weird, but I think it was done this way to condense the scene and make it more cinematic and dramatic. Clark's description of the backrooms "I found something in the store" and saying it's like describing a dog to someone who's never seen one, then having them draw it is so abstract that it doesn't really explain anything. I heard Kain Parsons say in an interview that he had some debate about dialogue with the screenplay writer. I wonder if he had the same issue with some of that dialogue or if he was wanting more of that. I found it interesting that some of the reaction video people thought it was a good description. No one who hears that description has any idea what Clark is talking about without having seen it. I will add that much of what is said in the Kane Parson's YT content is repetitive and somewhat irritating. It's usually a single person with a camera walking around the complex saying, "what the hell?!" or "hello?", so maybe his judgement about dialogue is not the best. I guess we'll see what happens in the next installment.
Bobby and Kat into the Backrooms
The first thing that has been interesting to me here is that at this stage of the movie, it's clear that Clark has returned to the backrooms many times, even before Bobby and Kat are taken through the doorway. But first-time viewers of the movie frequently think that the door will not work as before and when Clark tries to return to the backrooms complex, he's just going to bump into the wall and look silly. It's also interesting that among other things, Clark has collected at least two stop "POTS" signs from the complex, but we see later that the stop sign is still in the first stop sign room. I'm wondering if those collected signs were from other areas or if Clark took them from that stop sign room that we know about and they respawned there.
I'm a knot guy and I was intrigued by the knot Clark ties to lower Bobby down, especially since it ends up causing problems. I have searched the internet to see if anyone has identified it. People have speculated that it's a bowline. It's definitely not a standard bowline knot. Other people have suggested a Scott's locked bowline, but that's not it either because the working end doesn't exit the knot where it should. I also saw someone suggest an Eskimo bowline, but I'm not sure that's right either. Whatever the case, the lessons here are know your knots and also bring a knife.
People watching this for the first time noticed that Bobby finds his own shirt "End Apartheid" among the piles of clothing in the room he's been commissioned to explore. Bobby notices but doesn't do more than "WTF" when he sees it. Good catch people who notice this. I am wondering if the piles of clothes are a nod to the holocaust images where piles of clothing was left by the Nazis as they took the belongings of Jews and people they were taking to concentration camps. This is something I have not heard anyone else mention, but it's a visual that was used in Guiermo Del Torro's Pan's Labyrinth more overtly and specifically in reference to the holocaust.
One question I have here that I haven't heard anyone else ask is why Kat runs off on her own in this scene. It makes no sense to me at all. She doesn't follow Bobby and the monster, although she does bang on that door and she tries to open it, but it's apparently locked. She doesn't stay with Clark. She takes off through a different way and starts screaming. I guess it's one of those horror movie things where people just behave in stupid ways that don't make sense in the real world but help to move the plot along. Likewise, Clark doesn't try to follow Kat. He goes in a completely different direction.
The most interesting thing for me in the Christmas room is how many people see the manikins embedded in the floor and think they are actual people embedded in the floor. On my first viewing, I thought it was obvious what they were. It's weird that they are embedded in the floor, but not weird in the backrooms. Obviously, this is Clark's first introduction to two of the still-life creatures we will see later, but I will talk about them more in that dinner scene.
The pool room with Kat calling to Clark is one of the strangest in the whole movie to me. There are apparently backrooms creatures who can mimic human voices, but I'm not sure this is what was happening here. It's weird that Kat can see Clark through what she perceives as a window, but he sees as a wall. One person's video commented here about the significance of windows in this movie as a theme. Mary's therapy program references windows as a metaphor for change, "open the window within". I suspect there will be some explanation forthcoming in a sequel. I'm wondering if there will be some element of a backrooms time distortion or something like that. And lastly for this act of the film, the monster picks up the camera? Come on.... Why? Makes no sense.
Mary's Journey into the Backrooms
This act begins with a flashback/dream from Mary's childhood. We see Mary's mom in full-blown paranoia and the source of Mary's trauma. Her mom's voice seems distorted here. I guess the distortion was employed to make it scarier. Fine, but it also made Clark's message on the answering machine a little more confusing. More than one viewer I watched in reaction content thought the caller was Mary's mother telling her she wasn't coming back. One person in particular was so sure it was Mary's mom that she was baffled when Mary goes to the store to check on Clark. That person was a little goofy. People are funny.
I'll mention the soundtrack in this part because, although it's really good throughout, it's really good as Mary goes through the doorway into the backrooms. There is a heavy pulse like a beating heart, followed by emptiness like the void of the backroom complex with random sounds that echo the randomness of the layout of the building.
There is a shot where Mary is near the stop sign room and it first shows an angle looking past Mary as she is exploring into the stop sign room. After that, for an instant, the shot changes, now looking out from the behind the stop sign. It's very subtle and many people miss it, but there is either a severed hand or a hand of a dead person lying in the shadow to the left of that stop sign. It's only on screen for a brief second, but it's long enough to be identified. And there are flies buzzing around it in case you had doubts about whether or not it belonged to a living someone. This is another mystery that I suspect we will know more about with future installments of the franchise.
Mary comes down the hallway where the caveman was during Clark's first excursion. When she looks into the room where there was once an Async camera with cables running under the door, the cables are gone. The camera has been disconnected, and furniture has been moved in front of the door, apparently as a blockade. I don't know for certain, but I suspect this is the furniture from the first room that was now completely empty when Mary came through the door in Clark's store basement. I'll return to this later. I don't know that I have heard anyone in the reactions videos comment about this room, the disconnected camera, or the blockaded door, but I think it's important.
Before Mary enters the room with Clark's mural, there are chairs collected and piled up that were previously scattered randomly throughout this area. Clark has been redecorating. This is another small thing that I haven't heard other people note.
I won't comment on Clark's mural here other than to note that he has depicted Async people with hazmat suits. The rest is either obvious or obtuse, and I don't think we will know much more until one or more sequels.
The moment when Mary senses she's being watched, turns and sees the edge of a retreating body around the corner was done very well. One reaction video response to it was "that was the perfect amount of body to show". The reactions to Clark here that I have seen frequently doubt that it is Clark, even when he fully reveals himself to her. Maybe understandable, but I'm pretty sure this is the real Clark. He's just gotten weird by being in the backrooms too long. Every reaction viewer notes Clark's statement "It's just me. You know me". Everyone is caught off guard with Clark chokes out Mary. Everyone also reacts to "this is for your own good".
I don't have much to say about the scene with Mary's mom in the institution. I think it's just there as a way to validate the fact that her mom was nuts. Some people in the reactions videos speculate at different points that either Mary or her mom had some kinds of interactions with the backrooms prior to Clark's incident. I don't think that's likely.
One very interesting sequence in this movie that people generally don't know how to interpret is the sequence of rooms that begins with the room from Mary's childhood home, and the camera scrolls down floor by floor to backrooms replicas of this room, getting less and less similar to the original with each descending layer. I think this represents the backrooms complex taking inventory of Mary's memories of that one room and incorporating them into the complex ...somewhere.
Dinner for Two (or more)
This is probably the single most critical scene in the whole film. One of the things that stand out for me that I haven't seen discussed or mentioned by many people is the particular distortions of the faces of the still life figures in this room. The man in the striped shirt at the table has vertical distortions. The woman in red has horizontal distortions. The man in the wheelchair with the lamp (apparently named Archibald Leland Sutter, which are the names of different lamp making companies) has a distortion of one eye. I have a small theory about these distortions I will mention when I get to theories.
Another question I have seen debated is whether the woman in red is a still life of Clark's wife Barbara. She has red hair like Barbara. Clark doesn't say. He never refers to her as Barbara. However, I think she bears sufficient likeness to his ex that Clark is treating her the way he wants to treat Barbara. The consensus on this question seems to be that it is a still life of Barbara and the primary reason is her reaction to Pirate Clark. Pirate Clark represents the worst of Clark, his rage and raw emotions. When he approaches, the red lady flees in terror screaming. Some theory channels speculate that Clark may have physically abused Barbara in the real world and this still life has memory echoes of that abuse, which fuel her response in this scene. Someone in a video commented that Clark electing to go to therapy seems like a stretch because people in his state of mind don't typically choose to go to therapy. If there was domestic violence, it's possible that he could have been forced to go to therapy by a judge, or it's also possible that Barbara has insisted that Clark go to therapy.
When Kat's head is revealed in the refrigerator, Clark begins a sentence that is interrupted. "Oh, that's my assistant manager. I tried to help her but....". I really want to know where that sentence was going to land. I'm guessing he was going to blame Kat.
One of my favorite things in film is when scenes echo other art. I think it is fairly obvious that the scene where Pirate Clark takes a bite out of real Clark is a heavy nod to Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son.
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| Saturn Devouring his Son - Goya |
I had the privilege to see this painting in person in the Prado in Madrid years ago. It is one of the most power paintings that I have ever seen when you understand the context and the meaning.
This is not my original insight, but I will share it here because I think it's a valid interpretation of the climax of this scene, and it is an insight that I don't think many people grasp on a first watch of the film. None of the first time reaction video viewers talked about this level of interpretation. As I stated earlier, Pirate Clark represents the embodiment of Clark's emotions and rage. The backrooms in this film are also thought to represent our brains and memories. We loop, and build walls to protect ourselves, as Mary's therapy tapes state. When Clark determines that he's not going to change, and that he wants to live in this place where he can abuse people without consequences, his own rage representation consumes and destroys him.
Mary's Exit
Mary's exit begins when she decides to "forge a new path" by no longer sugarcoating things with Clark. She dishes out real talk, acknowledges that she cannot save him (from himself), and asks that if he is not willing to leave his own backrooms loops, he needs to let her go. She is not going to let the trauma of her past keep her trapped. However, Async may have other ideas.
It's interesting how many people recognize the basement of the store almost as soon as Mary pops up from the hole in the floor. It's also impressive to me that first-time viewers often notice that the taped door and other items are not there, so she's not in the real-world store, even before she gets up to the showroom floor and cannot exit.
A couple of things to notice about the Pirate Clark monster. First, he's not the same as the other still life figures because he bleeds blood when Mary strikes him, he shows signs of pain. And in the Async rooms where Mary passes, Pirate Clark is on a table being examined and it appears from the scans on display on the walls that Pirate Clark has fully developed bones and organ tissues.
It is clear from the dinner scene that Clark has a relationship with Pirate Clark. Phil, the Async guy shows a photo when he's asking Mary to confirm that she was looking for Clark in the backrooms complex. The photo he shows her has Clark, but also a redaction of a figure standing next to Clark that is clearly the Pirate. They were obviously buddies. What were they doing together for all those days?
The film leaves it unclear that they will ever release Mary. In the Kain Parson's backrooms YouTube content, there is a narrative line about an Async employee who goes missing in the complex. His family is told he died, but he turns up later. I believe they try to keep the guy essentially locked up while they try to figure out how to reintroduce him into the world, but he dies trying to escape. Also, I think this is the official company line, but there may be room to doubt their narrative. I'll leave it at that. Mary may never be going home. One of the commenters on YouTube observed that Phil gets to go home to his family every day.
Theories, Questions, and Lore (light lore)
Faces
I mentioned the facial distortions. This is a very minor thing, but I wonder if they might be significant. The stripe shirt guy's face is distorted in a vertical way like a nod. He allows Clark to do anything to him, including stabbing him and eating his body. The red woman's face is distorted horizontally, like she's perpetually shaking her head no. It could be that Clark's memories of Barbara are of her constantly telling him no. The lamp guy's eye is raised like he's surprised all the time. This is just idle speculation, but there you have it.
Eating Still Life People
One of the questions reaction people repeatedly had was how Clark first discovered that he could eat the still life people. I'm wondering if Pirate Clark showed him. That would make a little more sense to me.
The Lifeform
One of the monsters from Parson's YouTube series is known as "the lifeform". It looks like this.
People expected it would make an appearance in the movie. It did not. I have wondered if the lifeform was possibly early development of Pirate Clark. It's tall and lanky. There are also a number of other renderings of the lifeform from different "found footage" videos. Maybe that's how you get the still life people. I've seen people shoot down this theory, but I haven't heard very compelling reasons as to why they reject this idea. The life form variations happen chronologically prior to Clark's saga. Could Clark's proximity to the complex and his state of high emotion have rendered Pirate Clark as most alive "still life"? Surely something explains the difference between Pirate Clark and the other still life people.
Warped Brains?
It seems like the backrooms might mess with people's heads a bit. If so, that would explain things like
- - Clark's willingness to explore and decision to just start living in the backrooms
- - Kat's decision to leave Clark and run off on her own
- - The reason people can't seem to describe the backrooms (it's not really that hard)
- - Mary's decision to wander in and explore
There are other examples I have seen from different YouTube videos by Parsons and others. People do not do or say normal things in the backrooms. I suppose that's true of most horror film characters.
Clark and Pirate Clark's Relationship
This is the biggest question for me. What were these two doing in their time together. I suspect that Pirate Clark (PC from here on) is the one that picked up the camera in the pool room and that Clark was friendly to him. It seems like Clark was able to understand some kind of communication from PC, perhaps because of their connection. Did PC help Clark move furniture to build his blockades? Did PC kill Kat? At one point I was wondering if Clark brought Kat and Bobby to PC as a sacrifice, but I no longer believe that after a couple of rewatches. Clark seems genuinely upset when things go wrong with Kat and Bobby. I'm also curious if Clark had encounters with Async people. As I pointed out above, it's clear he's seen them in the complex because they appear in his mural. But I don't know if he interacted with them. He disconnected the Async camera and blockaded the wall. He pulled out their cables. Clark was not a fan of Async for some reason.
On a deeper level, PC is maybe Clark's first genuine connection. Mary's first question posed to Clark in the film is "do you feel alone?". Clark's responses in that session are all self-centric, "It's the way I'm wired". But after his connection with PC, Mary becomes "our therapist" and "we don't have to change. It's the way we're wired." Clark is no longer alone, but it doesn't last because it destroys him.
I've seen at least one person who tried to argue that PC is the real Clark. I don't buy that theory. Their strongest evidence was that PC has bones and organs and bleeds. Clark bleeds when PC takes a bite out of him.
Async Backstory
The film discloses very little about Async, but there's a good deal of background and lore from Parson's on his YT channel. Once Async discovered that their technology was creating a kind of other dimension with seemingly endless space, they wanted to use it to solve problems and make money. They had plans to market this space for storage and housing and all kinds of things. Unfortunately, the new space wasn't safe. The US government got involved and gave them one or more grants for research, but it's all top-secret stuff. I don't think you absolutely need to know this to enjoy the movie, but it also helps make more sense out of the story and gives it context.
The Hand in the Stop Sign Room
This is obviously someone's hand. It raises a lot of questions and there are no answers provided in this movie. Is it Kat or Bobby's hand? Or did Clark or PC kill someone else in the complex and leave them there? Could it be an Async employee?
That's all I have to say about Backrooms for now. If you have seen the movie and you have thoughts or theories about it, please share. Also, let me know if I got something wrong.
Thanks for dropping by,
Gavagai
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