'Backrooms' is Best Enjoyed As a Brutal Skewering of Millennial Cringe (vincemancini.substack.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) by Dort_Owl@hexbear.net to c/slop@hexbear.net

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I take it back I hate everything and want to crawl into a hole and never come out again.

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[-] daniyeg@hexbear.net 47 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

film industry specifically killed the careers of many young writers by outsourcing shoots and not keeping them onset and fucking them over streaming royalties to the point most of them can't make a living from writing, and now people shit on them for writing "cringe"? that's fucked up.

[-] Enjoyer_of_Games@hexbear.net 35 points 4 weeks ago

in my humble opinion Backrooms is best enjoyed by waiting for a torrent

[-] Big@hexbear.net 32 points 4 weeks ago

It was a very mid movie. Felt so video-gamey that several scenes felt more like a Let's Play walkthrough than a movie.

Video games used to be influenced by movies, but nowadays it seems that many movies are influenced by video games, complete with dumbed down exposition and an obsession with every minute detail having to have "lore."

It sucks.

[-] aanes_appreciator@hexbear.net 20 points 4 weeks ago

right? wake me up when the base is shaping and influencing the superstructure again

[-] WokePalpatine@hexbear.net 20 points 4 weeks ago

Yeah, the video game influence on movies is driving me crazy. The stupid deal was 'if you want a good story, watch a movie instead of a game' and then the shitty game stories are starting to invade the movies and people are saying they're good, actually.

Although I'd be curious if anyone else here thinks there's a difference or not between ARG stuff and video game stories. Video game stuff feels more like comic book characters with lore and mechanics tacked onto the narrative whereas the ARG stuff is more like pastiche/collage-based since it's by/for younger people who haven't had time to develop their own style yet, lore-first with characters and dialogue only begrudgingly added, and focused on lots of disjointed, edgy visuals or poetry in some form.

[-] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 11 points 4 weeks ago

ARGs don't have to have a video component, that's just a scavenger hunt

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[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 15 points 4 weeks ago

lore

Five Nights at Freddie's and it's consequences

[-] purpleworm@hexbear.net 10 points 4 weeks ago

an obsession with every minute detail having to have "lore."

It sucks, but this probably came mainly either from certain types of genre fiction or movies like Star Wars

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[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 29 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Aww but why would you steal from le wholesome underdog indie millionaire powercry-1

(The movie is fine, I just don't get the weird discourse surrounding it. Yes, nice movie and it's good to see more unique horror movies coming out. But this isn't anything groundbreaking or new. Paranormal Activity did the internet turned indie horror film thing well over a decade ago)

[-] ClassIsOver@hexbear.net 15 points 4 weeks ago

And The Blair Witch Project before that.

[-] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 12 points 4 weeks ago

I hate to inform you that Paranormal Activity came out almost 20 years ago.

[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 8 points 4 weeks ago

Yah I figured it was about that

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[-] mathemachristian@hexbear.net 32 points 4 weeks ago

I have no ability to take anything someone says seriously when they label stuff "millenial" or "boomer". It's such a lazy trope. This is isn't meant to invalidate how you feel about it, I hope it's not received like that, but calling stuff "cringe" or "millenial" is so childish I can't even get really mad at it. Might as well call it "poopy" or a "doodoofart" or whatever.

[-] comrade_pibb@hexbear.net 40 points 4 weeks ago

idk i think "boomer is a mindset" has got some legs

[-] PKMKII@hexbear.net 7 points 4 weeks ago

I think the difference there is concept of the “boomer mindset” is built around the economic conditions of the mid-late 20th century and the outlook it fostered. Whereas the “millennials vs zoomer vs alpha” distinctions mostly boil down to “their dumb brainrot, our iconic memes.”

[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 20 points 4 weeks ago

I think my beef comes because it's like if you hated Amazon and criticized it for years, but everyone decided you were the person who totally loved Amazon and was like "Hey this movie you like is actually us Amazon haters saying fuck you, Amazon guy! Hah! We're sticking it to the man, who is you by the way! Are you mad, Amazon guy?"

[-] mathemachristian@hexbear.net 15 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

To me that reads like my three year old declaring that I like to "eat poop" while I have to make sure he doesn't wipe his poopy butt on the diaper changing station. On reflection our current big topic is insults and hurting others with words in general so I think I just automatically go into a parental "lets name our emotions" mode and don't take it seriously at all. Which is not helpful to you I realise, sorry.

[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 12 points 4 weeks ago

It's all good my man, you have a healthy way of looking at things

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[-] blunder@hexbear.net 8 points 4 weeks ago

my three year old declaring that I like to "eat poop" while I have to make sure he doesn't wipe his poopy butt on the diaper changing station

Fucking lol that kid rocks

[-] mathemachristian@hexbear.net 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

He really does I asked him whate he ate that made his poops smell especially offensive today and without batting an eye this kid tells me he ate "stinky powder" to make his poops more stinky i-cant

[-] WokePalpatine@hexbear.net 24 points 4 weeks ago

Mary, the therapist — played by Norwegian Renate Reinsve, inexplicably opting to play Mary as vaguely Latina — is the only character outside of Clark to get more than five minutes of screen time in Backrooms.

What did he mean by this? Is there something she did or said that was 'vaguely latina'? I might have missed that.

[-] WokePalpatine@hexbear.net 20 points 4 weeks ago

Also disagree about Weapons being better-realized than Barbarian. Barbarian at least had a pretty clear social critique of privatized housing and cops and ends pretty crisply under than lens whereas Weapons isn't really about anything. I've seen it described as an attempt a modern folk horror, but that's just a description of the structure/genre and not the substance.

[-] splendidsadiks@hexbear.net 21 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

isn't really about anything

Bewildering to see this become the go-to comment to lob at a movie that beats the audience over the head so much. I encourage you to rewatch it & notice how completely checked-out everyone in the suburbs is to the point where they don't notice a witch trap house, the homeless guy, how the situation is minimized by the (pleasant & well-meaning) principal, etc

[-] WokePalpatine@hexbear.net 7 points 4 weeks ago

When the director says he put a floating gun dream sequence 'just because' it's easy to assume the rest of it is the same, especially when the nature/mystery of the witch trap house is presented as the focus over anything you've described. It's been awhile since I've since it so I don't remember the side characters much. I'm imagining if Zone Of Interest presented the holocaust camp as its own mystery box while trying to say it's about suburban disinterest.

Also, try to make an argument without being a smuglord on here, please.

[-] splendidsadiks@hexbear.net 8 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

When the director says he put a floating gun dream sequence 'just because'

Big fan of lying like this (not saying the quote is inaccurate)

Funny contrast to something like Saw pretending it has a message. Or idk pretending VVitch was some kind of subversion. Ppl are more credulous towards Obsession (which is just scary girlfriend slop) than they were towards Weapons, it just rubs me the wrong way & I think it put a lot of people off the movie. I saw the marks of The Discourse here that's all :P

[-] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 9 points 4 weeks ago

Obsession

Some of my European friends were raving about how great this was. I checked the reviews and it seemed to agree with them so I put aside some time recently and watched and all I can say is it was just bad. The camera work, the lighting, the writing was all bad. The acting was good (especially Inde Navarrette) but was heavily kneecapped by there being no discernable characters to speak of but simply vessels for plot to happen to. I heard all this praise of how groundbreaking it was tackling all these serious issues (like consent and loss of agency) but then the closest it got was referencing these ideas and then moving on to the next schlocky horror checklist moment. I was really disappointed.

Sorry for the rant but this movie (mostly the discourse around it) has just been annoying me since I saw it.

[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 8 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

OK so I'm not the only one noticing the weird glazing of "pretty good but nothing really new" horror movies coming out and any criticism being declared jealous cope?

Probably doesn't help that I'm as burnt out on horror as I am Marvel slop I tend to find most of the genre very samey in general and not usually very scary.

I'm also scared that they're going to ruin the SPC Foundation when this horror trend inevitability gets too many executive fingers in the pie and we end up with them doing the "OK these are the boxes needed to be ticked for success now, let's do it 500 times". Because Hollywood has already said they're now scraping internet horror stories for ideas.

[-] BuhbyeLittleGumshoe@hexbear.net 7 points 4 weeks ago

It’s interesting, if they did SCP it would probably be some sort of retro nostalgia bait around some famous entry like 173. Not sure how the licensing would work, but it seems like at this point the SCP community has moved on. A lot of new articles are overwritten novelletes, because so much has already been explored.

[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 6 points 4 weeks ago

Yeah SCP is quite old now, very early internet horror.

[-] BattleshipPokemon@hexbear.net 6 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

OK so I'm not the only one noticing the weird glazing of "pretty good but nothing really new" horror movies coming out and any criticism being declared jealous cope?

A lot of people are really desperate for mainstream good movies that are shared cultural experiences, and in the absence of any more than one a year at best they're just pretending that anything new, thats somewhat different from the slop factory they're used to, is completely groundbreaking

Compounded by most people nowadays being critically illiterate and terrified of being judged by social media panopticon if they look stupid so just defaulting to excessive praise to prove they got it in the absence of anything more to say about it.

[-] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 weeks ago

any criticism being declared jealous cope?

The fact that to my understanding Curry Barker was a B-tier internet comic who established a rather rabid fanbase probably contributes a lot in this case.

pretty good but nothing really new

Too high praise for a movie that I would say failed both technically and thematically.

[-] splendidsadiks@hexbear.net 4 points 4 weeks ago

I've really talked it to death on horror communities lol I am not in a position to criticize anyone else spending their rant points (wasn't trying to be a smuglord to the other person either, but I can see why it would be read that way). Making the male protagonist a slimeball is apparently enough to meet people's standards for biting social criticism

[-] QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 weeks ago

The entire movie was framed wrong (should have been from the victims perspective). A more competent writer/director could definitely make it work from the perpetrators perspective however Curry Barker is simply not that competent from what I've seen as the depths of his writing seems to begin and end with wow she's so crazy and erratic.

[-] axont@hexbear.net 14 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

My read was that Weapons was a very pained allegory for how alcoholic parents can end up traumatizing their kids. There's a lot of alcohol imagery and a bunch of instances of children being forced into caring for adults.

[-] Aradino@hexbear.net 12 points 4 weeks ago

Very unfair to Weapons which I felt had a really clear point

[-] WokePalpatine@hexbear.net 8 points 4 weeks ago

My view is that Weapons had a bunch of ideas kinda' thrown at the wall that mostly cancel out. So where I'm seeing it as a meaningless mess others are picking out one or two of those ideas and saying I missed them or don't appreciate them. Like, the metaphor of all the kids disappearing from the class except one seems like an obvious school shooting metaphor and yet the rest of the movie doesn't do anything with that, instead it's an individualized account of a cursed family. Maybe I'd appreciate it more with another rewatch.

[-] GoodBleanis@hexbear.net 8 points 4 weeks ago

I thought it was pretty clear that Weapons was about the harm alcoholism has on children, and the filmmaker has said this is the case. I do remember thinking it was a school shooting metaphor, but I think that was just because that was what was in the news cycle at the time in America. The movie is Australian, right?

[-] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 4 points 4 weeks ago

Weapons was directed by the Gallon of PCP guy from Whitest Kids U Know. If you want to understand the political perspective it was written from, WKUK is not subtle

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[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 19 points 4 weeks ago

Who the hell knows. Something something I'm 14 and this is deep, something something are Millennials killing da poopoopeepee industry?

[-] WokePalpatine@hexbear.net 17 points 4 weeks ago

This whole character smacks of latina.

[-] fox@hexbear.net 10 points 4 weeks ago

She has the exaggerated swagger of a latina or something

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[-] ashinadash@hexbear.net 22 points 4 weeks ago

and horror movies don’t have to be much more than a vibe.

Will I ever click on a substack article and not reget it?

[-] la_tasalana_intissari_mata@hexbear.net 20 points 4 weeks ago

the director is 21 or something, not a millenial

[-] purpleworm@hexbear.net 15 points 4 weeks ago

I believe that the author is aware of that and it's a basic premise of the article.

[-] Goblinmancer@hexbear.net 15 points 4 weeks ago

No more obssession backrooms stanning time to watch the zendaya trilogy (odyssey spider man dune)

[-] Dort_Owl@hexbear.net 14 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Odyssey and Dune are fine enough but I'll pass on Spider man. I got tired of superhero movies ten years ago about as hard as I'm getting tired of horror.

The capitalist mantra of just overstaurating the market with a single type of movie after a certain genre gets popular needs to die

[-] purpleworm@hexbear.net 7 points 4 weeks ago

Those aren't comparable categories at all. It's fine to not like horror but it's a very broad genre.

[-] Goblinmancer@hexbear.net 6 points 4 weeks ago

Im watching it because netease is giving you free skins if you watch spider man

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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026

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