What an odd experience.
I don't really know what that was, after obsession I felt kinda pushed into watching Backrooms and that probably did more harm for Backrooms than it should have. I think fundamentally it's a good horror movie because I shit my pants multiple times. However, what the fuck was the point? Or is this normal with horror movies?
I'm not a big horror fan
I always have to preface horror reviews by saying I actually hate being scared. I hate the feeling, I hate the experience and I get no enjoyment out of it. But I do appreciate that horror films can move you more easily than normal films. Some deaths feel so unfair and they really stick with me. Like 3 weeks after I watched the movie Bobby who just was in the wrong place at the wrong time will pop up in my head and I'll just be like "man, what a waste, fucking Bobby, shouldn't have died man...". But, also what is the actual point of a lot of horror movies, and I feel that especially with this one.
What?
What was the purpose of this movie? And if you dare to answer that question with "watch the webseries" I will stab you. Multiple times. With a spoon.
The first half of this movie was brilliant, it was mysterious, it was scary, it was good shit. I very much did not enjoy it (which makes it good). The characters felt real although not very relatable. I for one don't have a problem with alcohol, I swear. But if you were in the shoes of Clark you would probably react the same way to the backrooms, well, for the first half of the movie at least. So that tension was built up well. I was intrigued and fully into it.
The second half of the movie
But then comes the second half of the movie after Clark turned evil and makes the phonecall to his therapist. This part of the movie felt like it was written by a different person alltogether. We went from Clark being chased and someone picking up his camera to Clark having a fucked up tea party with his new friends. What? I mean it was shocking surely, but also so jarring. It stays cool and intriguing for exactly those 5 minutes and that's it (because he fucking dies). They don't really capitalize on that intrigue. You can defend it by going: "Yeah, but the movie is too short to show that middle part and to capitalize on Clark's insanity." But then we get a GTA 5 star chase for about 10 minutes where the magic and the horror is slowly disappearing, or they can show characters slowly walking in a store and approaching the wall multiple times. Eh.
The end
The ending is very brief with some explanation about what the backrooms are. It still leaves you with a lot of questions to which apparently the answer is: "Watch the webseries". That's just kinda disappointing and takes away a lot from this movie which wasn't even that bad. Also, I wanna add, everyone dies from captain Clark in an instant and a lady can just smash his head in with a rock without getting torn to shreds in 0.1 seconds but I guess that's just horror.
Conclusion
The first part of this movie was genuinely great and peak horror for me. The second half drops the ball. Hard. It doesn't help that I watched this after one of my most enjoyable horror watches ever (spoiler, it's obsession).
