blog entry #11 - the backrooms + other things

06/15/26 - 3:07 pm - monday

so uh...it's been a while

theres a lot of stuff i havent posted about, mostly cause i lost motivation to even get back on here and reformat everything like ive spent the last couple days doing. but i'm staying at my college over the summer for a class and figured since i dont really have anything else to do, this might be a good thing to get back into trying to write on every so often.

oh yea, im in college now!! isnt that wacky?? ill be starting my junior year this upcoming fall which is insane to think about

anyways the backrooms!! i remember when a24 first announced like 2 years ago that they'd be making a film, and up until a few months ago i completely forgot about it for the most part. i just kind of guessed it'd be a lot longer until there was any more news on it, and then seemingly out of nowhere the first trailer dropped. it was so good! AND THEY USED SIX FORTY SEVEN!!! i was so geeked hearing it in the trailer omg

the actual movie itself was soooo good! i wasn't sure what to expect going into it, but i think they did a fantastic job conceptualizing what a story about the backrooms would entail. i especially think clark as a main character was just such a good writing choice.

SPOILERS FOR THE BACKROOMS (2026) AHEAD!!!!

it was soo interesting to make the audience think clark would stay the main character, be the hero that we were rooting for. in some way, i still think he is. he's a very complex character, in that way. i think the point is to show how staying stagnant in our lives, trying to desperately cling to the times where we were happiest, is more harmful and painful than it may feel. clark can't move on from before the time his wife left him (which, to add on to that, might be implied she left him because he was abusing her when he got drunk?) and he had to start living in his store, which the very existence of reminded him of his failed dreams as an architect. in the backrooms, he finds peace, something he can hide himself in and deny that anything has changed or that anything bad that's happened in his life was because of something he did.

meanwhile, mary is a sort of foil to clark. they're a lot more similar than both of them realize: both are incredibly lonely, feeling somewhat if not extremely lost in life, and dealing with the repression of tramautic experiences. the difference is that mary can confront her trauma and experiences in a more healthy way, or at the very least just acknowledge that something happened to her. like with her mother and being trapped in that house we see at the beginning of the movie being demolished, she clearly still has lingering trauma from her childhood but has found healthier ways to cope, especially through becoming a psychologist and book author, though there's still some hesitation to fully move past her childhood and her mother being put in a mental facility.

this is very obvious in the dining table scene, where clark forces mary to do a roleplay method of therapy they'd previously done at one of clark's appointments, though this time clark forces mary to just admit clark is right and that he's done nothing wrong, though mary refuses and angrily tells him everything that's happened has been his fault entirely: his wife leaving him, his business failing, all of it. clark's already way far beyond helping at this point, as he truly believes all the bad things in his life are the result of something else, not him. when mary basically says she cant help him and hes just the way he is, this seems like it breaks something further in clark. it solidifies what comfort he found in the backrooms: he doesn't have to confront any of the uncomfortable truths back in the real world, and he doesn't have to change. nothing does. he is able to control everything there, for the most part.

pirate clark is where that idea fails, though. pirate clark is just the still life version of clark, but his appearance is honestly just really sad. the fact he is remembered by the backrooms as the very thing he hated, being the owner of that furniture store, is depressing. ultimately, that's likely what he'd be remembered for in the real world after his disappearance - if he was remembered at all, given that we only know of one family member (his wife) and she is presumably no contact with him. meanwhile, we do see missing posters for kat and bobby, his two employees, who he seems to have knowingly dragged into danger, if not outright knowing they'd be attacked.

anyways, pirate clark attacking clark after they presumably had a non-hostile dynamic is remarkable because it's immediately after clark says that mary told him "they" dont have to change that pirate clark attacks him. pirate clark is a manifestation of all the worst parts of clark: his anger issues, inability to admit guilt or wrong-doing, and possible abusive actions (given how the still-life of clark's wife screams and runs in fear when pirate clark approaches). by clark trying to tell him that he has done wrong, but that it's okay because they don't have to change, it brings out that hostility in pirate clark that previously been dormant toward clark. clark wasn't really healing, just kind of acknowledging his wrong-doings but making no effort to actually correct them or improve himself.

meanwhile, mary manages to escape pirate clark after beating him with the piece of rock with the handprint she'd left in the wet cement of her childhood home's driveway that she'd managed to snag after going to visit it during the demolition. the piece being shattered repeatedly against pirate clark's face and head was symbolic of mary being able to both confront her trauma and actively heal and move on from it, though we don't really know what happens to her post-ending. presumably, async (the corporation who has a lab set up in the backrooms and is actively trying to map the entirety of it; the beginning pov of the movie is from one of their researchers) either keeps her captive so she doesn't try to tell anyone about it in the real world, or just outright kills her to get rid of any loose ends. i'd like to think maybe they just wiped her memories of the event and let her go, though, after what she went through. who really knows.

but that's about it, i think! i just really liked this movie and wanted to yap about it for my first entry in a couple years. im working on a few "guides" // walkthroughs to games ive played i want to get posted in the next couple weeks. but for now, that's all. bye!! :)

signing off, atlas ♥