Backrooms

Rewatched the entire series again and then rewatched the movie. I can now bump it up to 2.5 stars. Everything is good in the movie except one thing. The cinematography, visual elements, audio design, special effects, mood, and lighting were all done REALLY well. But as far as a storyline goes, it still sucks ass. Most if not all the character arcs are incomplete or feel forced. Clarks descent into insanity feels uncalled for since we know from the beginning he likes to live alone. The therapists side plot of her as a child serves basically no purpose other than a VERY forced “arc completion” when she hits Captain Clark with her stone (that she just carries around??). The dinner scene still feels off since once again it feels as if we don’t know the characters enough to deserve or care about why they’re doing that right there. Rewatching the videos I did find evidence of still life before the movie (in ff3) so i take back my points on that. The pacing is still weird in the movie, it goes too fast and too slow at the same time. I know the point of Captain Clark’s design is to be uncanny and a poor imitation of Clark but I just found it funny and wasted potential. It reminds me of Gabriel from the Mandela Catalogue since they both try to make something scary but end up just looking goofy. I really wanted to see more Async lore and scenes in the movie but that’s just a personal opinion. I understand that this movie was to explore the backrooms from the point of view of ordinary people so it makes sense that they didn’t include much of the company. The second half of the movie still feels off even after having watched it since it strays too far from what Kane has done beforehand. I understand what he was trying to go for but it ended up being like a cliche movie, complete with all the horror tropes that the first half of the movie did so well in avoiding. Overall, I understand why Kane decided to confirm the theory of the backrooms’s origins together with the Still-life (even though i still wonder why Async hasn’t encountered them yet after years of being in the Complex. They found evidence of the bacteria and bacteria monster but no still-life???). But still the characters were not fully fleshed out, didn’t feel like we should care about them, and had undeserving character arcs that were there jus to forward the plot.