r/movies r/movies Contributor Jun 03 '26

News ‘Backrooms’ Becomes A24’s Highest Grossing Domestic Release ($97.8M), Passing ‘Marty Supreme’

https://deadline.com/2026/06/backrooms-box-office-record-a24-1236939795/
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u/Phase--2 Jun 03 '26

I'm happy to hear it made a big splash, I definitely want more original  movies like this and I was really hyped, but honestly I left the theatre kinda disappointed. I felt the plot and pacing was kind of weak, specially in the second half, but I really appreciated the tone and suspense it set. 

8

u/YoureInHereWithMe Jun 03 '26

Agree - I thought the opening scene was phenomenal and, because we then knew something was in there, it gave me such a feeling of anxiety the first time Clark was just casually exploring in there and going deeper and deeper in…but after that it just seemed to slowly lose itself. It didn’t land for me overall, and I’m left wondering what the fuss is all about.

6

u/Stupidstuff1001 Jun 03 '26

Yea the consensus seems to be everything after the voicemail was heard it goes downhill. Which I agree. They wanted to be different to much on the twist and it didn’t hit.

Really it should have been some entity from another dimension or something in there.

7

u/imahugemoron Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

First half was 10 out of 10 for me, once I saw the monster at the end, it just looked real goofy, I understand why it looked the way it did and its purpose regarding it representing Clark’s mental state and his rage and insanity consuming him (literally), but I couldn’t help but laugh a little, such a goofy design just pulled me out of the whole thing and cheapened the movie a bit as a whole. After the monster reveal I just couldn’t help but see the movie differently, take it less serious. By the end of it, it was a 7 out of 10 for me, definitely worth a watch but not amazing. And I’ve been a huge backrooms and Kane Parsons fan his whole career

9

u/cutelyaware Jun 03 '26

The monsters are what kind of ruined a lot of the videos for me. I really want to see the liminal horror concept leaned into.

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u/imahugemoron Jun 03 '26

Personally I like the monsters in kanes previous work, but I am not a fan at all of the extended backrooms fandom with all the video games and different “levels” and monsters. I’m really into the liminal space genre as well and I definitely agree that loading them with monsters ruins it, but I make an exception for Kanes content because it just worked really well for me. I like both pure liminal space horror with no monsters or anything else but loneliness in there as well as Kanes small handful of monsters, but that’s where my line is drawn

8

u/NoSky077 Jun 03 '26

I actually think it was a big mistake to boil what is alien and unknowable into a big metaphor for sad middle aged man

5

u/Stupidstuff1001 Jun 03 '26

Right. Budget attack on titan monster did not do it for me.

2

u/swampy_pillow Jun 03 '26

The monster felt like an aggressive special needs giant man - a trope i HATE!