3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Backrooms

2026, Kane Parsons (The Backrooms) -- cinema

OK, not going to make the same mistake with a few other recent movies -- when something makes me feel something inside (gross, I know), I need to get it down before it goes away. 

This movie chilled me and enthralled me. And I imagine that is what some of the characters in the movie felt as well. 

This movie is an extreme example of the "don't go into the basement" -- you know you shouldn't go down there, and if you do, something bad will happen. But you go anyway, and the audience yells at you (yes, you have an audience as well) for being so stupid. But... what's down there? Danger! Of course. All the horror of the movie could be washed away by just not going down into the basement!! Well, most.

Many?

I have a pretty good sense of direction, generally better than most people I know. When I emerge from the subway, I always know which cardinal direction I am facing. But, put me into one of those underground malls, with all their weird angles, and corridors looping back on themselves and that sense of direction begins to slowly slip away. If you know the Toronto PATH, you might know what I am talking about.

So, when Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kinky Boots) finds the "soft spot" in the basement of the dying furniture which he runs, and in which he lives, and begins to explore the weird connected rooms and corridors looping back upon themselves, every fibre of my being was screaming "DON'T GO ANY FURTHER !" Oh, I know he was expecting this to be reality, that what he had literally stumbled into would follow the rules of architecture and physics, but I saw the trailers, and also, I already knew this place. The further you go into that place the more likely you are going to go beyond a point from which you can remember the way back. You will most definitely become lost; you will most definitely end up being in there for the rest of your life.

This movie is based on a series of YouTube short films by this film's director Kane Parsons. He in turn drew upon the creepypasta that originated on 4chan with a single image of weird empty yellow rooms with terrible wallpaper and terrible carpet, accompanied by a single paragraph description, mentioning a video-game concept of "noclipping" out of reality. To noclip, in a game, is to accidentally (or intentionally, once enough people learn of the "soft spot") through a barrier, such as a wall or floor, into the spaces outside of the game's content. Sometimes you noclip into a space intentionally built by game developers, but most often you are just breaking the game and end up "falling" forever. Sometimes, you are just suspended ... somewhere. I recall one game where I ended up just under the world map, where my character was swimming. I could hear water, see my character's motions of swimming, but I could not see water nor could I go anywhere. I could see the map just above my head but I could not reach it. I was lost forever. I needed to reload.

Clark should have reloaded. He has noclipped into a place which starts by being familiar (abandoned furniture store) but the further he goes, the less familiar, and the more unnerving it becomes. And there is something in there with him, something that he always ends up fleeing. And yet Clark, an angry selfish man, brings his assistant store manager (really, his only employee with a fancy title) Kat (Lukita Maxwell, Shrinking), and her handy-cam bearing boyfriend Bobby (Finn Bennett, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms). It should be mentioned that it is the 1990s but the only bearing it has on the movie is the technology, the desire to use the "found footage" motif and to limit communication.

Clark also involves Mary (Renate Reinsve, Handling the Undead), his therapist, who has been constantly reminding Clark that he is stuck, stuck in his anger, stuck in his self-destructive patterns. As a therapist, who also has a book and video tapes, it is her schtick, her selling point, in that only you can choose other doorways in life, but most people keep on walking the same corridors forever. The comparisons are obvious, but handled really really well. Eventually Mary goes to Clark's store to see what he was going on about, before he disappeared. And she finds the entrance, which Clark has conveniently marked out with masking tape, and she finds Clark. It does not go well for either. Mary has her own personal corridors she has been traversing for years and years; Clark's experience exacerbates these and allows ... some closure? 

I have recurring dreams. In this writing I have probably mentioned The City before, but there was always one aspect, which is probably inherent to dreaming, and lends itself to what this movie is proposing, but there were the rooms and corridors of my dreams. There is The Apartment, which has many many rooms, connected to short hallways and stairwells. The entry room, with its big bright windows, leads to the kitchen, but off the kitchen, you reach the TV room with its 70s sunken floor and walls of VHS tapes. From there is a hallway that leads to The Kitchen, a massive room from a house that would have staff. I have never been through the door at the far end of The Kitchen. There is the underground shopping concourse, a cramped series of hallways and stalls selling all sorts of food stuffs like cured meat sandwiches and spices & herbs in bags, and dried goods I don't recognize. There are no straight lines, everything is jammed in together, people shouting, people hawking goods; I never find what I am there for, but I just love the experience of my visits. And there is The Factory, a falling down abandoned space I enter at the waterfront, but then find my way up but into what, I am never sure. Its always via weird tight hallways, stinking rooms full of junk, jammed doors, crawling over refuse to get ... somewhere.

Backrooms exposits that the rooms are memories of real spaces, but the idea that memories are built on how much you forget. Dreams are built on what you remember, but also .... on much more. The movie never explains what they are, why they are really there, who created them, what created them, but introduces it all without any real satisfying ending. We just wake up when the credits roll, confused, disoriented, disturbed and more than a little excited by it all. 

Thanks for seeing it, again, with me, Kent. Also Kent.

31 Days of Halloween: Weapons

2025, Zach Cregger (Barbarian) -- download

In 2022 (wait; that wasn't last year? it seems so recent), we loved Barbarian and like Kent, I am hesitant to label Cregger as the "next....". We've got a lot of those currently, and while I don't mind adding more standard horror directors to the roster, I don't care when they get labelled as the top of their food chain.

This movie was a fucking ride, just like the last one.

And just to get this out there, it almost felt like he got heavy-handed with the allegory early on in the story, just to get it out of the way. Then shit could get entirely fucked up without diluting his intent. 

The story is told from a few different viewpoints, doing the tape rewind, so we can see each person's perspective. But the bookended story is told like a campfire tale, from a little girl's voice, the kind of scary stories children tell each other, far fetched and unreal, like the ones I used to hear/tell, about the Butterscotch Palace (a large caramel coloured hospital in my home town) and the insane patients who escaped. One night, 17 children from Ms Gandy's class ran out into the night, at 2:17am precisely, and ... well, we assume, were never seen again. One child was left behind, and nobody knew what happened.

We start with Ms Gandy (Julia Garner, Wolf Man) and, yeah, she's a bit of a mess. She knows exactly where the vodka is stored in the large alcohol convenience store -- making a beeline right to the fridge and grabs two large bottles. Not that we would fault her, for she is being blamed by the parents of all the missing children, though the investigation for the following month found nothing to connect her. Nor did they find out why only Alex didn't run.... away. She really really wants to connect with Alex, but as Principal Marcus (Benedict Wong, 3 Body Problem) says, that's more to make her feel better than him.

Next up is Archer (Josh Brolin, Outer Range), the father of one of the kids. He's angry and upset and is demanding more be done to find the kids, and figure out whatever the fuck happened. He's the only one who seems to pay close attention to the weird way the kids run and the direction they head. He's also stalking Ms Gandy a wee bit, giving somewhat innocent explanation to the stalking figure she's been feeling. 

And there's Paul (Alden Ehrenreich, Beautiful Creatures) the cop she used to date, who shows up to comfort her. And opposite Paul there is James (Austin Abrams, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark), the local junkie who just blunders into the plot, trying to secure funds for his next fix. Just as Archer is catching onto ... something, and goes to Ms Gandy to see where she fits into it, she is attacked by Principal Marcus, who is wide-eyed (wide enough to have torn off his own eyelids?), maddened looking and covered in blood and scratches. Just before he bowls her over, we see he is running like the kids did. Archer saves her and...

Tape rewind, many tape rewinds filling in the story, stretching it far from the allegory of school shootings and gun violence into something... creepier and more traditionally horror. Archer has had his hallucination, a vision of an assault rifle in the sky, with 2:17 imposed on it. Why? What does it mean? Nothing directly connected to the story, but the hit-with-a-hammer metaphor that the US is caught up in a cycle where utterly terrible, confounding things happen and people need explanations, reasons why it keeps on happening, so they can ignore the real reasons it is happening. Here, there is a reason for the horrible, inexplicable event that impacted 17 children -- its a witch (Amy Madigan, Carnivàle), a simple horrible witch with her own Hansel & Gretel level manipulation going on.

I get what Kent was saying Cregger's sketch comedy past being prevalent. I found many scenes more eerie than comical, but there were a few, such as Gladys fleeing the children chasing her, where a guffaw escaped me. But so many many other scenes just overwhelmed the funny with chill; everything was well placed here, scary to me and my mind that fills in so many blanks.

We Agree.

Watching: True Detective S4: Night Country

2024, download

We never really watched S1, the rave review season of this "series", primarily because of Hannibal fatigue. Oh, that show wasn't the only one doing serial killers with artistically horrifically set murder scenes, but it was the epitome of that serial killer sub-genre. We tried to go back a few times but... well, you know us. Remember, we have never been able to commit to Broadchurch either.

I heard rave reviews about this season as well, and because we like Fortitude, and its murder in a cold, isolated environment, I suggested we watch this. To be honest, much of its style and mood and theme borrows from the Svalbard set show. As it starts with a unique location, the vibes of being set during the "30 days of night" time period, and has a lot of interesting, challenging characters in this remote town of Ennis, Alaska, a mix of mining folk & local indigenous people, centered on the utter asshole Chief of Police, Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster, Contact).

But in the end, I didn't find any pay-off. It ended as all these creepy, psychological, pseudo-procedural crime thrillers do -- with a bunch of possibly supernatural, possibly extraordinary crimes hinted at and jump-scared out the wazoo, but explained via (admittedly satisfying) mundane human murder.

So, on the first day of night, we are presented with a bunch (I get you are embracing the You of being You, but someday you should consider the vocabulary you choose to use) of scientists isolated in a self-sufficient lab outside town. They are going about their activities when one does something weird. Cut to a time period later where a delivery man finds the place empty, the classic "they left in the middle of everything" scene. Danvers is called in, tense situation, find the missing scientists. Secondary character Eve Navarro (Kali Reis, Asphalt City), all tattoos, piercings and MMA fighter body, is introduced as a state trooper with a beef with Danvers. 

The missing scientists, who are later found dead, in a "mountain of frozen flesh". They are naked and their faces depict shockingly terrified deaths. Also, at the lab, a severed tongue is found, the tongue of Annie Kowtok (Nivi Pedersen, Borgen; fascinating! a Greenlandic actor/director), an indigenous woman who was murdered but the investigation never went anywhere and Navarro blames Danvers. So now there is a new, horrific case and they are seemingly connected.

As these shows do, much of the time is spent establishing the characters and the setting. And as these shows do, there is constant eerie imagery such as the ghosts that Navarro's mentally unstable sister Julia (Aka Niviâna, Borgen; also Greenlandic) sees, or the scarred polar bear who calmly wanders through town or Navarro's flashbacks to her deployment overseas or... its a technique that ten or more years ago I loved, but tire of easily these days. I want this imagery to have distinct meaning, but all too often it is played for cheap jump scares and "cool scenes" which generally don't pay much into the plot. And as usual, season closers dismiss almost all of them.

If anything, the show excels at the characters. Chief Danvers is a damaged almost sociopathic cop. Navarro is a damaged distinctly loyal woman trapped in two worlds. Captain Hank Prior (John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene) is a damaged, sad father who wants nothing more than to have Danvers gone. His son Peter (Finn Bennett, The Nevers) is smart but is on 24/7 duty due to Danvers and his marriage is suffering for it, and yet he trusts her more than his father. Even all the secondary and supporting characters are interesting and incredibly well played.

Don't forget to mention the minimal role of Christopher Eccleston who also played a role in "Fortitude". And Issa López, the showrunner who was responsible for writing and directing many of the episodes, and did a brilliant job of keeping the tone and visuals consistent. And the setting, shot in Alaska and Iceland being actually authentic cold, but still falling into the usual "cold environment" folly of "if its's -20 C why can't I see their breath?"

I just wish I got more out of the show as a whole. If this had been my first rodeo, with season long murder investigations in cold climates with unending damaged main characters, I would have revelled but...

Kent's view. I agree with pretty much everything he said, but he was more impressed than I was.

31 Days of Halloween: Midnight Mass

2021, Mike Flanagan (Gerald's Game) -- Netflix

Of note, this writing covers the three episodes (of a 7 run limited series) that we watched over two nights.

Speaking of comfort blankets, its nice knowing that something Mike Flanagan will come along pretty much every year. This is the third of his series for Netflix, but this time not even indirectly connected to A Haunting... But, he does bring back much of the cast from the previous two series, which is rather endearing as it shows he likes working with these people and that they like working with him. 

This time we leave a house for an island, a small isolated island off the coast of New England, not only isolated geographically, but also seemingly lost in time. Gone are the days of prosperous fishing, gone are the days when the young were not expected to leave. The island is emptying and those left behind are stuck in their ways, for better or worse. 

The world building for this island is meticulous, but not in the "look at the details!" way that Midsommar presented, but more in a grand way of filling out the background in which the characters inhabit. The houses are all low and flat, to have the nor'easters blow over them. Everything is weather worn and grey-green-brown. The electric street lamps are from a by-gone era, the roads are still only earth. The Sherriff's office is in the back of the convenience store. There is a bar, but we never visit it, as all our main characters are God Fearing Christians, well all but the recently hired (appointed? elected?) Sherriff Hassan (Rahul Kohli, iZombie) who is a devout Muslim, but one who converted himself. He less plays the odd duck on the island, and more the voice of reason in the furor to come. Everyone else we meet is a Catholic.

Into this small Christian community, there are two returns. Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford, Friday Night Lights) returns from "the mainland" after having spent 4 years (of a 4 to 10 year conviction) in jail for vehicular manslaughter -- he killed a teen girl in a drunk crash. He has lost everything and so returns to the island, to the home of his parents, to meet the terms of his parole. We immediately see that he is truly and wholly haunted by the image of the girl he killed, an eerie image of her face embedded with glass, reflecting the flashing lights of the first responder vehicles. He sees her every night. The second "return" is the arrival of a new priest, Father Paul (Hamish Linklater, Legion) who arrives to replace Monsignor Pruiit, an aging man who fell ill after his return from the Holy Land, and is recovering on the mainland. But things are not as they seem; well duh.

*Spoilers*

Given she is only a seven episode run, Flanagan doesn't leave much room for filler, thank the Lord. In episode one we get hints of something strange going on: Father Paul dragging a massive sea chest into the rectory with him, with a thumping coming from within, the kids hearing and seeing something on the island they canoe to, to drink and smoke, the death of all the stray cats that said island was inhabited it by, each one drained of blood before being washed up on shore by the first episode's storm. He is not going to play the mystery game with us, and by episode three we are secured in our understanding that a vampire has come to Crockett Island, a big leathery creature brought by Father Paul. 

But that is not the horror, the horror lies in the devout Christian faith being subverted by the corruption of this monster. Even Dracula relied on the connection between vampire mythos and Christian mythos. It is no coincidence that one drained by a vampire rises from the dead three nights later. It is no coincidence that a Christian mass involves drinking "the blood of Christ". And Father Paul, nee Pruitt, sees himself as having found not a demon, but an Angel of the Lord, in the Holy Land of all places, and has brought it to Crockett to heal the wounded, and bring youth to the aging.

And fuck, do I hate Bev Keane, the right hand of Father Pruitt and an utter cunt, excuse the word. She embodies all that is wrong with Christianity, all the corruption and bitterness and slander and hate, all masked in a friendly, saccharine, condescending veil.

I hope she gets what's coming to her.

31 Days of Halloween: I See You

 2019, Adam Randall (iBoy) -- download / Amazon

This movie almost felt like watching two, maybe three different movies, wherein the different acts of the film take on the different perspectives they are formed from. More a psycho thriller than an outright horror, it never really lets you know this until deep in the movie. 

The movie opens on family tension. The music is atonal often discordant, telling us this is going to be a weird movie. Expectations are set, and established, as the family: Jackie (Helen Hunt, Mad About You), her husband Greg (John Tenney, True Detective) and their son Connor (Judah Lewis, The Babysitter) are terse with each other, downright unfair at times. Later, we find it is because she had an affair. Greg is a cop, who suddenly has to deal with the disappearance of two boys, likely by a re-emerger serial killer from the town's past. Everything about this setup is upsetting and unsettling, especially as things start happening in the family home: strange shadowy figures, things going missing, odd sounds. It all culminates when the man Jackie had an affair with shows up, seemingly drunk and demanding, only to be murdered in their basement. They believe Connor did it, and bury the body in the woods. As if this family didn't have enough stress.

*spoilers*

And then we shift.

Suddenly we are seeing through a video camera, as two phroggers, like squatters, except they hide in your house while you are there, only emerging when its safe to come out, move into Jackie and Greg's house. Alec (Owen Teague, It) and Mindy (Libe Barer, Sneaky Pete) are filming their activity hoping to make some YouTube money. But Alec isn't as cautious as Mindy, proving to be the shadowy figure, and responsible for all the strange activity in the house both while the couple are there, and while they are away. Even Mindy is getting worried, as Alec begins to act more and more unhinged. While this goes on, the music style has changed, the camera work has changed, we are almost in a different movie. Our expectations have had to shift.

And shift again. The murder is explained, as is so much. But not everything, nor does it need to be.

I will not dive into, leaving something for you to learn, but suffice, I did not see it coming until much of the plans had been laid out for me. And that, on top of everything else, made me like this movie. I like seeing the unexpected, not knowing what would and could happen next.

As a final note, while not really related to the movie itself, I was oft distracted early in the movie by the cosmetic surgery Helen Hunt displayed. To me, the utter unnatural look almost added a body horror element to the movie. I don't want to judge, and I cannot walk in her shoes, but I cannot subscribe to this trend that replaces the natural look of aging with looking intensely inhuman.

Also of note, the poster depicts a frog (phrog?) mask, not a monkey.