The Backrooms (+ Wiki) - Level 80085: The Kiwi Farms

[teriyakiburns]

Other takes on the Backrooms are worse. There is a wiki describing it being made of "levels" that sound like random Gary's Mod maps.

The "levels" shit is an expression of the same problem SCP developed, where a bunch of people who were attracted to the superficial aesthetic, but didn't understand what made it actually work, latched on to the concept and tried to formalise everything into autistic categories based on the thing they obsess over most. In this case, video games. It completely misses the point of the entire concept.

 

[Fellen]

Spoiler: Random movie spoilers/thoughts.

This is not a "you must have a high IQ in order to understand" movie, but it does seem like Gen Z/Alpha can't handle slow burns.

I do wish there was more from Kat and Bobby apart from them getting killed, maybe the therapist finds them, idk. Their deaths could've happened later.

I actually liked the explanation for the Backrooms, and the ending. It makes sense that there's various people finding entrances to the Backrooms, and I do like the idea of those who do find the Backrooms create "Still Lifes" of themselves and parts of their life. Just seeing the ending of parts of Kat, Bobby, Clark, and Mary's life now in the Backrooms poorly imitated is pretty cool. So every time someone enters, it continues to grow. It does try to make sense of why the monsters in the various Backroom shorts are so varied, they're a twisted form of someone's memory.

Kat is cute.

The film isn't perfect, it's not scary, the opening was too long and could've been shortened, they really didn't explore enough of the Backrooms in different settings, but I liked the plot. A solid 7 to 7.5.

 

[Messiah Mike]

Spoiler: Random movie spoilers/thoughts.

This is not a "you must have a high IQ in order to understand" movie, but it does seem like Gen Z/Alpha can't handle slow burns.

I do wish there was more from Kat and Bobby apart from them getting killed, maybe the therapist finds them, idk. Their deaths could've happened later.

I actually liked the explanation for the Backrooms, and the ending. It makes sense that there's various people finding entrances to the Backrooms, and I do like the idea of those who do find the Backrooms create "Still Lifes" of themselves and parts of their life. Just seeing the ending of parts of Kat, Bobby, Clark, and Mary's life now in the Backrooms poorly imitated is pretty cool. So every time someone enters, it continues to grow. It does try to make sense of why the monsters in the various Backroom shorts are so varied, they're a twisted form of someone's memory.

The film isn't perfect, it's not scary, the opening was too long and could've been shortened, they really didn't explore enough of the Backrooms in different settings, but I liked the plot. A solid 7 to 7.5.

I don’t typically like horror flicks because i’m a bit of a pussy and I don’t like to be scared watching a film. So for me watching the film solo did scare me.

Spoiler

That scene in the beginning with the clothes and the dead body scared the shit out of me. a lot of people in my theater didn’t see the face so I was the only dude who made a noise

 

[DOORSTUCK]

I've read some discourse from people attributing the Kane's interpretation of the backrooms to AI use, which is massively retarded because

Spoiler: lore, if you don't care click me

the movie spells it out. The backrooms creates incoherent copies of what is remembered from humans. I give the theory credit because early AI pictures were exactly that, but attributing this concept to current-year-sperging is unfounded. Async and their motives are established years before the movie.

I understand normie theories but damn if they are shrouded in thinking it must be an allegory to current events.

 

[piccolorizz]

I've read some discourse from people attributing the Kane's interpretation of the backrooms to AI use, which is massively retarded

The only thing that could be legitimately said to be AI inspired is the "still lives." Too many fingers and eyes. But that's already like the long established theme of the backrooms being randomly generated.

 

[DOORSTUCK]

Too many fingers and eyes

Funnily enough that is the motivating factor of their theories believe it or not.

 

[piccolorizz]

RLM had a pretty good review

 

[Oranges]

I'm a big fan of the Kane Pixels series (not any of the other Backrooms content out there like the wiki stuff, which all seems like uninteresting cringe in comparison) and have seen all his YouTube videos multiple times. Just got back from seeing the movie like an hour ago. It was an 8 or 9 out of 10 for me, pretty compelling experience and largely lived up to my expectations. I would have liked more A-sync in the movie or to learn more about "The Complex" (aka The Backrooms) than the movie revealed, but I understand that likely would have been hard to cram into the movie along with Clark and Dr Kline's perspective which is more important. Made sense that A-Sync didn't feature prominently in this first outing which had to be more of a first time experience for a wider audience, and for that it was better to focus on Clark and Mary Kline.

I had a couple theories going into the movie, and they ended up being somewhat confirmed or remaining just as plausible if not more likely coming out of the movie.

Spoiler: Theories

1. The alternate dimension of The Complex is "swallowing" all of our reality as more and more "null zones" (read: portals) are popping up, so that as time goes by it becomes increasingly more likely for random people (or animals) to accidentally stumble into The Complex. In the Kane Pixels "Missing Persons" video it shows the amount of missing persons cases going up at a linear rate, and I think this chart is just an early stage of what will be an exponential trend as The Complex increasingly swallows our standard reality. So I think that is the ultimate stakes are for this story world, that literally all of our reality will "fall into" or I suppose merge with the The Complex, and so doom humanity.
   
   • It's unknown whether A-sync with their government funding can do anything to stop this creepy reality-swallowing apocalypse from occurring. Maybe if they shut down their own "null zone" portal into The Complex it would stop or lessen?
     
     
   • Even if A-sync could stop it by doing something, their collective attitude is just curiosity and their leadership are not at all asking that question of "we made this start happening, now it's our responsibility to figure out how to stop it".
     
     
   • At the end of the movie, the guy speaking to Mary Kline comes across as though he and A-Sync are still largely clueless. The A-sync guy (I forget his name) says that portals keep opening up everywhere, conforming to what we knew from the YouTube series. They weren't that surprised to find Mary in The Complex.
     
     
   • Before Clark discovers the portal in his store to The Complex, we see that weird diagonal switch in his circuit breaker box near where the portal is. I think that's a sign that The Complex can bleed into standard reality, which fits the ideas of the two dimensions merging. No one would install a diagonal switch that looks like it doesn't belong.
     
     
   • Kane Pixels has a unlisted video on Youtube titled "I remember", where it's a guy reading a poem. The guy is believed to be Ivan Beck, the head guy at A-Sync and the first person to come into contact with the dimension of The Complex. To me, the poem along with the visuals strongly suggest that The Complex is swallowing our reality more and more. The "house taken by the sea" is simply our normal reality, and it is being "cast down to the seabed with all the other forgotten things" (seabed = The Complex). The poem has a personal vibe to it to reflect his own personal obsession with The Complex, which is perhaps similar in ways to how Clark in the movie became enamored with it.
     
2. In case you don't know, the fan community refers to the creatures that look like poor human copies as "Still Life". Even prior to the movie I speculated that Still Life (and possibly other types of monsters in The Complex as well) don't have the conscious intent of being hostile to humans. Prior to the movie we only saw one Still Life chasing someone, and most of the audience assumes it wants to attack and kill him. But I think they are such a shoddy replica of human consciousness, that they don't have a reasoning or emotional process that looks like "I want to attack that human". I think they are just drawn to humans like moths to a light source, because after all in being human replicas they are also (badly) replicating the human desire for social contact (most people who fall into The Complex will be thinking about their family and need to find someone as they wander around endlessly and begin to starve). Sure enough, this movie showed that not all Still Life are hostile. Or at least they are not hostile all of the time.
   
   • The Still Life replica of Clark, which people are calling "Captain Clark", was pretty hostile. But the human Clark seems to have grown the expectation that it wouldn't attack him for whatever reason, based on his prior encounters with it. I think "Captain Clark" either just attacked the real Clark at random because it's just a shoddy idiot replica that just thoughtlessly does things. Or some people have suggested it attacked him after Clark demonstrated physically hostile behaviors (and so it mirrored his behavior some). Maybe Clark could have done something different and it wouldn't have continued attacking Clark and Mary? But probably not in my opinion. I think it was less likely to default to attacking Clark, but that status quo wasn't guaranteed to continue.
     
     
   • There are also other Lifeform creatures which were not in the movie, which people tend to think are basically giant blobs of mutated bacteria that also attack people. I think these also just act on instinct and are drawn to humans. But they are not "hostile", because their consciousness is perhaps too primitive to ascribe that intent to. They are just weird bacteria things that The Complex mutated and is perhaps trying to make them mirror actual life forms in its own shoddy way.
     
     
   • At one point in the movie there is a message written on a wall that says something like "tables don't bleed". Later in the movie Clark describes Still Life as being like furniture, and when he takes a chunk out of one we see that it doesn't bleed. The comparison to furniture shows how low level their "consciousness" (if they even are conscious somewhat) really is. Such a thing doesn't intend to attack people, that's just how we describe its behavior when it is in motion. Similarly, a moth doesn't intend to kill itself when it flies into a flame.

 

[Quijibo69]

Saw it 3 times, 2 times on youtube, 1 at the theater with normies.

Spoiler: spoiler

I like the David Lynch horror at the end. I think the message of the film is don't get stuck in a rut because it's easier than changing.

 

[Oranges]

I can forgive this missing though because the movie does end on a note that keeps you guessing. Is she really out of the backrooms?

I thought it was clear that Mary did get out of the backrooms due to the A-sync people escorting her out. The Backrooms made a copy of her though just like it did with Clark. The question was, whether A-Sync was going to let her just leave and resume her life. Presumably the government is already monitoring what A-Sync is doing, and they might not want people who escape to start talking about it and create public panic. That A-Sync guy didn't seem like he wanted to answer her, and he said it wasn't up to him.

I went into this knowing about the memes but only watching one of Kane Pixels videos. While I enjoyed it, I can't tell how good it is because my screening had packs of kids that would not shut the fuck up. I like that this film is for people with working brains and an attention span. However, whenever things slowed down the iPad kids would get board and talk to echoer or say "shh" back and forth.
Is this normal when going to the moves now? This is the first time I've been the moves in a decade. I remember less noise last time and that was a Disney slop film that probably had teen and kid in the theater as well.

I don't go to the movies often at all, so I was worried there would be loud zoomers if I went to see it too early. Thankfully there was only some loud people coming in late in the first three minutes seeming high as a kite and giggling, but after that it was fine.

 

[northstar747]

The back rooms youtube videos and creepy pasta shit. Making a movie about that would be hard.

I kinda agree with the red letter media guys.

The director had some good guidance.

The writer knew how to keep it from getting boring. Basically there was a prolog a few acts, and an epiloge.

everything that was set up and had a pay off.

They didnt try to explain the why or how, just that its there and people go in there to figure out what it is.

Personally I woulda loved for more time with the 3 retards stumbling around in there.

One thing I also liked is that there really isnt an antagonist, you dont have men in black, companies, aliens etc

for 10 million and what they had to work with it was okay.

 

[Fortyone]

I kind of agree what people say, the first half right up until the end of the "expedition" footage was fantastic, music was great and overall very well executed. Second half they could have fixed alot by making it more clear clark was in the backrooms for weeks or possibly months, the people I saw it with were confused because they thought he went insane in a day or a few days. They could have also developed the character of the 2 employees better but thats not a major gripe. I really liked the sequence when it generated descending levels of her room and I did actually like the Clark monster. For me it was a bit on the nose how the monster represented Clark's inner image of himself and his life as this fucked up monster who ruined his own marriage and his relationship with the store he hates, but other people i talked to didn't get that at first. What's interesting was how I overheard some kids walking out saying the movie was "really really boring", probably since it moved slowly at the start.

I was a big fan of kane's stuff on youtube before so overall I loved the movie and how it advanced the plot of the stuff he worked on, the cloned humans were a nice new addition.

 

[Plumber's Kokoro Wish]

I went into this knowing about the memes but only watching one of Kane Pixels videos. While I enjoyed it, I can't tell how good it is because my screening had packs of kids that would not shut the fuck up. I like that this film is for people with working brains and an attention span. However, whenever things slowed down the iPad kids would get board and talk to echoer or say "shh" back and forth.
Is this normal when going to the moves now? This is the first time I've been the moves in a decade. I remember less noise last time and that was a Disney slop film that probably had teen and kid in the theater as well.

I had the same thing going on a few rows in front of the group I went with, low IQ jabbering and endless fucking with popcorn bags or something.

 

[pork and beans]

Kane's interpretation of the backrooms to AI use, which is massively retarded because

I somewhat disagree..

Spoiler: sperg

I do agree with you in that the movie is NOT about AI usage and IS about memory.
However, with the presence of AI today literally everywhere and especially how much of a point of contention it is in the arts, I don't think it is crazy to say that it has had an influence in the movie. Horror often reflects the anxieties of ones generation and reflects the ongoing discourses of its time.

I'd say that the movie takes the concept of liminality and ties it with concepts such as the existence of a collective memory and what happens to that in a setting that is hyperreal, consumerist (I dont mean that in a lib ohh capitalism way, but its a world in which the protagonist lives alone in a furniture warehouse; the backrooms are filled with objects of all kinds, rendered completely useless. it is not a narrative that presents objects/tools as useful or valuable, much less unique. compare that with interpretations of the backrooms in which there are prizes (eg almond water) or where tools facilitate survival– here, they only facilitate death)
objects are copies of copies of copies and the characters we are presented are not only isolated, but stuck in the past.

The topic of copies or iterations has probably been a thing since Theseus' ship, but AI has made the main public, especially younger generations, a lot more fixated in these things.

I think the visuals, instead of the plot or whatever, is where the claims of "AI influence" make more sense. The laundry pile scene in particular reminded me a lot of those early AI generated images or those "Stroke simulator" images where picking apart objects is impossible.
Although the still lifes should definitely be traced to much older tropes such as as skin walkers, mimics, jungian shadows or personas, or the more general concept of the alterego, I'll say that their design (overlapping faces, too many fingers or eyes, etc) definitely takes after AI generated images more than it does faulty human memory.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that AI is, if unconsciously, present in the movie one way or another despite the story taking place in the 90's. I do however think it's a stretch to claim that Kane made a movie about AI, same way I dont think its accurate to claim that the story is about dementia just because it features music or visuals from Everywhere at the end of time.

the first half right up until the end of the "expedition" footage was fantastic, music was great and overall very well executed. Second half they could have fixed alot by making it more clear clark was in the backrooms for weeks or possibly months

very much agree, the 1st half was top notch, the second felt pretty disjointed. Clark's arc in particular felt pretty out of the blue, he went from being totally repressed to completely deranged in a matter of minutes; I understand that in the narrative its been a long time, but for the movie it happens way too fast. If that was supposed to be the point, I dont know if I found it satisfying. ill say I watched it very late at night on YouTube because it hasn't hit my theatres yet, so maybe when I watch it like god intended ill change my mind and commend the pacing, but...

 

[Exegesis]

I give the theory credit because early AI pictures were exactly that

I'd also add that a lot of backrooms associated images back in the day were AI generated. A lot of people claim to have made a bunch of them but 9 times out of 10 it's skilled blender users or digital artists creating a 3d model or making a layered file in procreate based off the image and then passing it off as their own thing to get clout. Early fandom drama had this happen with several opportunistic literal who's.
I thought the film was boring. The whole "mysterious abstract place" subgenre of horror has been done to death by ARG's since the 2010s and now the film industry is gonna pick up on the trend almost 20 years late.

 

[Manimal House]

Second half they could have fixed alot by making it more clear clark was in the backrooms for weeks or possibly months, the people I saw it with were confused because they thought he went insane in a day or a few days.

I think the movie tried to make that known with the amount of envelopes stuck under the door of the store, but that was such a small moment that was glossed over and it could have been more clear if the regular store had more of a disheveled, trashy outside with a dim, dusty inside. Or anything else aside from that particular 4 seconds that tells you the door hasn't moved in a while.

That's one thing that bothered me about the whole experience. There were so many scenes where characters are slowly walking and staring at the empty rooms, even in the third act when we're well past looking at that stuff. Simultaneously, there are little details that add to the situation that just go by so quickly that you may not catch it. It's clever, because it makes me want to see it again to find what I missed, but it's also kinda annoying.

 

[Hijo de D. Woodchucks Jr.]

I haven't seen the film or even care about any of the backrooms stuff, but I'm gonna make a spinoff called "The Chirp." IYKYK

 

[Caligura]

I haven't seen the film or even care about any of the backrooms stuff, but I'm gonna make a spinoff called "The Chirp." IYKYK

That's just the Shape Store.

 

[Imperial Citizen]

I haven't seen the film or even care about any of the backrooms stuff, but I'm gonna make a spinoff called "The Chirp." IYKYK

If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong neighborhoods, you'll end up in the Blackrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old soul food, the madness of cheap white wallpaper, the endless chirping of smoke detectors at maximum tweet, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented remnants of Section 8 housing to be trapped in.

God save you if you hear some SoundCloud rap artist wandering around nearby, because he sure as hell has heard you.

 

[Messiah Mike]

If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong neighborhoods, you'll end up in the Blackrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old soul food, the madness of cheap white wallpaper, the endless chirping of smoke detectors at maximum tweet, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented remnants of Section 8 housing to be trapped in.

God save you if you hear some SoundCloud rap artist wandering around nearby, because he sure as hell has heard you.

Cobson beat you too it buddy

Also I’ve seen you on the tno thread when I was just scrolling and I find it kind of funny that I parrot the exact same talking points as the early a logs on the thread yet get a totally different reaction