Here’s why I think the Backrooms resonates with the feeling of living in our time.
We are more isolated than ever before, the main character has no friends, he has his furniture store, his employees and the character he plays on tv, he has his therapist.
These days we are encouraged to seek therapy as a direct solution to the negative emotions of depression and anxiety. As if simply by exploring and digging through the backrooms of our mind we will find some logical salvation.
How scary is the idea that there isn’t any solution to be found in therapy, that are mind is just a collection of memories and representations of the past. Even those closest to us exist as 8-bit characters in our memory. We fill in all the blanks ourselves as we go along.
But even more than this I think we are all a little creeped out by what’s going on in our heads. Just as our dreams are always a novel incoherent surprise, we are scared about what we might find in therapy, or in the back of our heads.
We actually don’t know what’s there, and in a world where boredom has been conquered by a buffet of distraction, it’s never been more convenient to avoid having to look.
In the film he finds meaning in this chaos, he finds a solution which to him makes sense but to his therapist and the audience is a horror show.
The film tells us that going into our heads can be both scary and dangerous.
But if therapy isn’t the answer, what is?
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