Logan Bonswor

genuinely movie of the year curry barker is a genius, obsession is paced so well and the topic it covers is **such** an important one. as far as media literacy goes, a person's understanding of this movie should tell you a lot about them. all of the acting is outstanding, but inde navarrette truly shines as nikki. her performance is comforting at the beginning, utterly chilling throughout, and heartbreaking at the end. the lighting and cinematography feels so good to watch, and the symbolism in the movie is also very well thought out. i also thought the scares were so good, especially the uncanny stuff like nikki walking backwards. the movie is not only scary in the moment, but also disturbing and **incredibly **thought provoking to me. i haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for the last couple weeks. i can’t say a single negative thing about this movie, i’d maybe go as far as to say it’s my favorite movie of the decade. 11/10, phenomenal work by everyone involved in the film.

6.5/10 if i could + visually stunning + the found footage/camera sequences were unbelievable + great acting + good references to backrooms levels(poolrooms etc) and also musical references like ulterior motives and the caretaker - too much of the obscurity of the backrooms was sacrificed for a somewhat already weak story - if the sequencing was moved around i think i’d enjoy it more: > move the end async part to the beginning, as in the expert not knowing everything would make it so that we didn’t feel like we had to either > move the “memory” part of mary’s home to the part after he explains that the more it remembers the less it does > i also think the “memories being wrong” idea would have been more compelling if we actually saw something changing between clark leaving the backrooms and re entering, like the floorplan or something, but that never happened unfortunately. like maybe the second time that he entered it made it a bit more like the first teaser where it opened up more or added pathways or changed the furniture - captain clark looked too cartoonish my interpretation is clouded with confusion, but i like the idea that captain clark acts as clark’s darker thoughts and that he most likely killed himself via the darker self (losing everything and thus losing hope), and mary grew up in a broken home and had likely already experienced the backrooms in her childhood the idea that new backrooms entrances were popping up everywhere made me think that different people have their own kind of sections of the backrooms based on their memories (hence why mary had her old house and clark had all the furniture)