Has anybody else seen the recently released documentary about Lumon Industries’ original severed floor, before they built their newest one? Apparently they didn’t clean everything out and they left behind a few stragglers.
Seriously, the movie ranks in my top 5 list of creepiest movie concepts that I’ve ever seen. It had a blockbuster opening weekend, for a movie that cost $10 million to make:
Opening weekend box office - $81million domestically, $118 million globally
Youngest director - Parsons (20) - to helm a #1 grossing movie
Best opening for an A24 movie
Highest R rated opening for 2026, Top 15 in history
Biggest opening for an original horror movie EVER
I thought is was good…and an original concept…but not great. I liked that it created so many questions and I still don’t feel like they were all answered.
Two other creepier movies that are in my top 5 are:
I have not seen this movie (nor do I intend to) but the director is only twenty years old and this is his first film. It’s quite an impressive achievement.
One can argue that there isn’t much plot to this film but honestly, the direction and set design are amazingly good. The word I keep coming back to is “unsettling”. The whole film is unsettling. Even when we’re not in the Backrooms, the rooms and people encountered are all “off”, and it becomes increasingly difficult to see where the line between reality and the other world is drawn. For example, when Mary comes up the stairs at the end into the showroom, is that the real showroom or a copy? I couldn’t tell.
In short, I really liked it. And I think it’s been deliberately teed up for potential sequels.
She’s still in the Backrooms. The showroom door is bricked up and she can’t get out the front. She has to squeeze through the tiny opening between the walls to finally get out.
Yeah, definitely a creepy unsettling film. IMO where the film is at its lowest is in the actual story parts, when they are outside the rooms. All the psychologist stuff. But everything inside the Backrooms is great. I would have liked more of the found-footage aspect. I also wish we knew more about how long Clark was in there exploring and going crazy and how he “tamed” the copies he found. He’s being chased and then suddenly it’s an undetermined time later and he’s got tons of rooms mapped and eats the copies. What.
They’re not bricked-up - there are concrete barriers outside of them preventing exit. Which A-Sync would have done to prevent any of the creatures it was trying to summon from getting out. And the barrier she squeezed through was likewise put there by the lab techs. They had previously blocked off areas within the Backrooms as we’d seen.
None of the signs I could see in the showroom were wrong or backwards in the brief shots of them. And while this means she would have exited the Backrooms into the store basement through a new door, we’re told that new doors are opening all over the place.
I understand this from a cinematic metaphorical perspective but the minute he revealed that, I turned to my daughter and said “How exactly did he find that out?” Creepy in a whole different way.
Possible, though having just seen the film for a second time tonight this is how I see it.
When Mary comes up from the staircase into the ceiling and crawls up into the furniture store lower level, that’s still in the backrooms. All of the stuff that Clark has been doing on that level, the whiteboard, the taped door, the POTS sign he took, are not there. The furniture store Mary goes into is a copy that is connected to the Async research facility through a narrow passage between the walls. That’s how the scientists were entering and why they set up their gas machines there. That’s why when Mark Duplass sees Clark in the commercial he is so shocked because it’s the man he saw on the video in the furniture store backrooms that he has seen a copy of. He asks Mary “How did you get here?” Meaning into their facility. If that store was the real one then he would not have known that she was in the backrooms and want to get all the information on what she saw while inside. At the very end we see new rooms the backrooms has created which include a copy of the housing development sign by Mary’s old house, Mary’s book cover, and missing posters, all with all the text correct. So the signs in the store being right doesn’t mean it’s real.
4chan is, unfortunately, pretty influential. Does the SDMB have any reach whatsoever?
I’m very mildly familiar with the source material and liminal games/horror in general - I personally don’t get them, but I have non-zero interest in this movie. Low enough that I’m fine waiting for streaming if it doesn’t demand to be seen on the big screen. Those who have seen it, what do you think?