jokershady said:

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Considering taking my two boys (14 & 12) to this. They're excited about it. Did some non spoiler reading and for an R movie doesn't seem too insanely bad…

Curious to hear your thoughts

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Yeah, for an R-rated horror movie it's not too gory. I would say there's, I think, maybe only three scenes with actual blood, one of them involving a brief shot of a severed head, some sprayed blood, etc. But overall there's really not that much actual blood, gore, or violence shown on screen at all.

That said, again, in its place, there's A LOT of dread/psychological horror. It's super creepy and disturbing throughout. Your 14-year-old can probably handle it, but it depends, re: your 12-year-old. I have 12-year-old twin nephews and there's no way in hell I would take them to this, but that's mainly because their parents hardly expose them to even PG-13 movies, which, as you can imagine, we butt heads on. But me as a 12-year-old? I would have watched this in a heartbeat, no problem. I might have been a little disturbed, but that's about it.

So, yeah, it just depends. But for an R-rated horror movie, it *is* relatively tame compared to something like Obsession.

Sea Speed said:

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Did you watch all of the backrooms videos on YouTube by Kane first? It's less than two hours of content iirc.

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I did not. I was vaguely aware of them, and had seen some images, but I didn't see single clip of the YouTube footage before last night.

I've been pretty big into the whole "liminal" thing that's happened online in the last few years. Watched most of Backrooms on YouTube, as well as The Oldest View (an even creepier series by same guy), follow the liminal subreddit, etc.

And I'll be honest, this one underwhelmed me a bit. It's not nearly as good as the YouTube series, IMO. The feeling of dread is not quite as strong, the final villain was kind of weak sauce, and the sci-fi angle from the YouTube series was missed.

A little boring for pretty long stretches (whenever it's not in the Backrooms).

But that said, I'm glad to see it be so successful and look forward to the franchise continuing.

Yeah, I definitely wanted more of the sci-fi angle. In fact, I wish the majority of the movie was basically the opening sequence. More about scientists discovering the space, then being haunted/hunted as they run experiments, trying to figure out what it is. Instead, I understand the impulse to want to discover/experience it all through the eyes of a few Average Joes, but Clarke, especially, just wasn't compelling or likable at all. I love Chiwetel Ejiofor, but his character straight up sucked. No idea why he was the lead and not his two employees, or at least more interesting versions of them.

‘BACKROOMS’ earned $38.4M in its domestic opening day.

• 4th biggest opening day of all time for a horror film

• 2nd biggest opening day of 2026 for any film

• It has already become the biggest opening of all time for an A24 film pic.twitter.com/RQ3MOsdac8

— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) May 30, 2026

Pretty solid movie. Enjoyed it, but not as dreadful/scary as I expected to be honest.

I only just now watched a trailer. Definitely need to check this one out. This is as close as I can imagine to seeing some of the stuff from the book House of Leaves on film. One of my favorite books since college.

I've seen that comparison made several times. That book blew my younger selfs mind when it came out. Fun fact about the author, his sister was the singer of the one hit wonder band Poe that was briefly popular around the same time.

Her album "Haunted" is kind of a companion piece to that book. It's seriously one of my favorite albums. Long story short she (like a lot of artists at the time) got turbo effed by her record label (crazy convoluted issues with labels getting bought and sold, etc)so she basically quit doing stuff under her own name for like 10 years.

Interesting, is that the album that the song that was all over the radio was on? I should re read that book.

Man I hated this

First album had "Hello", "Trigger Happy Jack" and "Angry Johnny", 2nd album was Haunted. "Hey Pretty" was the 1st single off Haunted and the video version of the song had her brother doing spoken word pieces from his book instead of the verses, and she'd come in with the chorus.

I've heard 3 different versions of "Hey Pretty." The album version, with just Poe singing; the bonus track version, with Mark Z's spoken word bits with Poe on chorus; and a version I found online that is JUST Mark Z reading more pieces of the driving scene.

My high schoolers wanted to see this so I took them. Strangest movie I've seen in a theater in a long time. I understood what was going on but I didn't really understand why the movie was made.

Ooh i definitely want to hear that 3rd version

Took my teenagers to see it today. I enjoyed it, but I do have 2 frustrations

1) Making it into a big budget movie just seemed to capitalize on Stranger Things - mysterious world beneath/beside our own that seems like ours but not quite, you wander in, wander around, scary monsters, and a team of scientists in hazmat suits trying to explore/understand it.

2. The most fascinating revelations seemed to happen off camera - namely however Kat got her head bit/torn off and how Clark figured out what the place was, what the copies were, that most of them weren't going to hurt him, and how he survived the initial encounter with the Pirate. I get the suspense of having the therapist make those discoveries through Clark, but it seemed like the real heart of the Backrooms was just told to us by Clark instead of seeing it ourselves.

Bonus: There was an antique bookshelf in one scene that I have an exact duplicate of, and have had since my parents bought it a an antique for my room like 45 years ago. So, I'm sure I won't have any nightmares about that anytime soon.

Belton Ag said:

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My high schoolers wanted to see this so I took them. Strangest movie I've seen in a theater in a long time. I understood what was going on but I didn't really understand why the movie was made.

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Same boat here. Tons of development, none of it mattered. Chekhov's guns a million. In another thread I described it as an M Night Shamalyan stream of consciousness indigestion nightmare.

this pic would’ve went triple platinum on tumblr https://t.co/lT5UX0N9mJ

— mad tsai (@MadTsai) May 31, 2026

We have seats for a 7:30 showing today.

45 mins of commercials for local businesses and trailers for upcoming films. The lights come on for 5 mins and now we're back to commercials?

Should we make another thread for discussions on what the hell we think we just saw or we just doing all that here? Spoiler tags or no?

Cause I got some (hopefully) interesting takes AND curious to get feedback from others cause I know there's multiple interpretations that could be correct.

Well one thing we can all agree on is that this is definitely a Christmas movie[/DiehardGuy

My more critically thinking kid said the stuff in the Backrooms reminded her of bad Generative AI. Even what Clark says is that it's making copies that are just a little off. My daughter had gone to some art exhibition where you could type stuff onto a screen and it fill up this huge video wall of AI. She had it do some dogs, but they warped almost immediately into dogs with 2 heads and she said it creeped her out and thought the people in the BR were similar.

Can we assume the redheaded weirdo in Clark's dining room was a copy of his wife?

CharleyKerfeld said:

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My more critically thinking kid said the stuff in the Backrooms reminded her of bad Generative AI. Even what Clark says is that it's making copies that are just a little off. My daughter had gone to some art exhibition where you could type stuff onto a screen and it fill up this huge video wall of AI. She had it do some dogs, but they warped almost immediately into dogs with 2 heads and she said it creeped her out and thought the people in the BR were similar.

Can we assume the redheaded weirdo in Clark's dining room was a copy of his wife?

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Couldn't tell if she had a donk or not. Tough call