Shadowing Practice: Backrooms Movie Breakdown and Ending Explained - Learn English Speaking with Video
Les maken...
1
Backrooms likely left you with quite a few questions about the liminal space itself, the entity that resides within, the guys in the hazmat suits, and what the hell was that ending?
2
Hey, welcome back to Screen Crush, I'm Colton Ogbren.
3
Now, this movie may have been the first time you have actually heard of the Backrooms, or so you thought.
4
But if you were on the internet in the early 2010s, you have definitely seen these walls, especially this picture.
5
So what we're going to do here is break down this movie and explain the ending.
6
But first, I want to give you a little bit of history on the Backrooms itself.
7
This is the back rooms, and so is this and this and this.
8
Basically, the back rooms, they are a liminal space, an endless dimension of rooms that you can access by clipping or glitching out of reality.
9
Let me explain.
10
The back room's urban legend, or creepypasta, started back on 4chan in 2019 when someone started a thread on 4chan's paranormal board with this photograph attached.
11
The anonymous poster also said, if you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the back rooms,
12
where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights,
13
at maximum humbuzz, and approximately 600 million square miles of randomly segmented, empty rooms to be trapped in.
14
God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has hurt you.
15
And thus the internet myth caught on like wildfire.
16
After After that initial post, people began to post their own backrooms, even creating their own subreddits to post new lore on.
17
Now one of the new lore pieces established was the backrooms having levels, which we saw adapted in this film.
18
This idea of levels allowed backrooms fans to get creative with the liminal aesthetic and adapt their own version of the backrooms,
19
which led to many different video game and short film adaptations to be made within the following years.
20
Severance creator Dan Erickson even cited the Backrooms as his inspiration for the design of Lumen.
21
Now, one of the most popular adaptations of the Backrooms was Kane Parsons' 2022 short horror film, Backrooms Found Footage.
22
This was the first of many Backroom horror shorts that he posted on his YouTube channel, Kane Pixels.
23
The web series gained so much traction among Backrooms fans that in February of 2023,
24
Deadline announced that A24 would be picking up the series as a full-length horror film adaptation.
25
That being said, there is a lot of Backrooms lore online from different niche communities, but for this breakdown, we're mainly going to focus on the lore from the YouTube series,
26
which is largely regarded as, I would say, like, the canon of the Backrooms.
27
Cain Parsons kind of has, like, an authority on this, but it is very open source, so there is no, like, official canon.
28
So, going into this Backrooms movie, you do not need to have watched the short films to understand it, But I do highly recommend checking them out if you're intrigued by this universe as a whole.
29
There are a couple of pre-established elements of this universe that Parsons explored that we are going to cover in this breakdown, like the organization Async.
30
These were the guys in the hazmat suits, the research foundation
31
that we briefly see at the beginning of the film as well as at the end of the film
32
when Mary is found.
33
Now in the Backroom series, Async started out as an MRI company, as Phil mentions in the movie.
34
But in April 1988, two years prior to the start of this film, Async began to experiment with opening a doorway into the backrooms.
35
These doorways into the backrooms are called low proximity magnetic distortion systems or thresholds.
36
They need what is called a null zone to connect to the universe.
37
These null zones are areas that connect to the real world like the tapped out door underneath Captain Clark's Ottoman Empire.
38
Now after six tests, Async was finally able to open a doorway to the backrooms, which then caused the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
39
After this, the threshold remained open, causing a spike in missing persons and leading to a higher exploration of the backrooms.
40
Hey Doug, by the way!
41
Not now, person!
42
I am earning us some money!
43
Oh, sweet!
44
Carry on!
45
Guys, I learned something recently.
46
The majority of Screen Crush viewers are watching us on your TVs.
47
And if you're like me, sometimes you just like to have the TV on while you're scrolling on your phone.
48
And I'm sure a lot of you like to even play mobile games.
49
I know Doug does.
50
We have found a way that we can play games and earn money by using Snacksy, the sponsor of this video.
51
You can jump into different games, earn coins as you play, and once you've collected enough, you can choose how you want to redeem your rewards.
52
And if you click our link below, you get a $10 signup bonus.
53
It's a simple way to use your downtime to earn rewards that you will actually use.
54
All you have to do is play complete tasks and earn coins, then cash in your Snaxie coins to earn rewards from brands that you actually use.
55
Amazon gift cards, Netflix, Uber Eats, Visa, or if you're a gamer, you can redeem for any of these platforms.
56
Snaxie features puzzle games, farming games, RPG, action horror, and loads more.
57
I've been playing the Grand Mafia, where you navigate the underworld to take control of a crime family.
58
Snaxie has already given away 1.2 million dollars in rewards and it is a great way to relax and earn hassle-free.
59
Now that $10 sign-up bonus is available through our link down in the description below, so grab it while it's live.
60
Just click our link below and use the code SCREENCRUSH to get started today.
61
Now back to what I was saying.
62
So that brings us right up to the opening of this film with researchers at Async exploring Clark's backrooms.
63
And how do we know this is Clark's segment of the backrooms?
64
Well because we see this same no-credit-needed banner clipping out of the ceiling as we see later in his department store.
65
And I have to say that there is no better location for a backroom hub than a department store.
66
The entire backroom's lore started from a photo of a hobby store.
67
The liminal space genre revolves around these uncanny in-between spaces like a doctor's office waiting room, an abandoned mall, or a movie theater.
68
Having Clark live in this department store is such a perfect
69
way to show just how far deep into the backrooms he truly is, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
70
So, this entire scene, it is shot first-person POV, with the researcher holding the camera, and I really like this detail, because it calls back to not only Parsons' short films,
71
but to a lot of the more popular backrooms games like Transliminal and The Complex.
72
I also really appreciated the way they were able to integrate the found footage aspects within the film itself.
73
A big part of the tension behind analog horror
74
or found footage is that it makes you feel like you're a part of it.
75
It's much harder to incorporate POV shots like this for a long time as it can be disorienting for audiences, but The Backrooms uses that disorientation in its favor.
76
We feel the fear that the researcher has as they are running away, or the fear that Bobby felt as he was scrambling to escape the entity.
77
I also thought it was a cool note that this film begins with scientists watching someone on found footage explore the backrooms,
78
the same way that we the audience were introduced to the backrooms by Parsons through watching these found footage tapes.
79
Now, this async researcher very quickly gets found by the entity.
80
Now, at first I had thought this was the life form from the backroom series.
81
We've seen this humanoid life form throughout a lot of Parsons short films, and it seems to just wander around this endless maze.
82
However, now knowing that we are within Clark's backrooms, as indicated by the banner, I think this is actually Captain Clark that attacks the researcher, but we'll get back to that in a sec.
83
So we then hard cut to Mary, watching as her childhood home is bulldozed.
84
Mary is such an important part of this film.
85
Not only is she acting as Clark's therapist, a person that he can trust and disclose his darkest secrets to, but she is someone who has been through her own journey.
86
Mary has already escaped her back rooms, nearly literally as we saw in that flashback.
87
The only remnant she has of that old home was the rock handprint
88
which she later uses to escape the back rooms once more.
89
And that ending battle is a literalization of their own personal mental struggles.
90
That hand in the pavement also perfectly represents the physical embodiment of memory and how it can be distorted over time.
91
We're not seeing an actual human hand in the imprint of that cement, but still in a philosophical way we understand that hey
92
that represents this hand and that's what we see a lot in the back rooms.
93
It's not actual things but off representations of things.
94
Now when Mary
95
and Clark have their opening session she mentions how the unhealthy
96
behaviors people learn as children cause them to feel stuck in their daily life.
97
And this may be what is causing Clark to act out.
98
And there is no better example of someone stuck in their unhealthy behaviors, their backrooms, as Clark.
99
Now, as I said earlier, he literally lives above his backrooms.
100
He is neighbors with all his dark thoughts and faded memories, so much so that he ultimately lets it take him over.
101
This film emphasizes how the backrooms are rooted in our subconscious, how representative they are of our own trauma,
102
and how easy it is to drag others into the same unhealthy echo chamber when unchecked.
103
Bobby and Kat are both examples of this.
104
During the initial therapy session, Clark says that he's not alone, he has employees.
105
And we see how heavily Clark relies on these two who are just people who work for him.
106
We see this when he hastily asks for their help to explore the back rooms,
107
and he leads them past several stop signs offering empty reassurance before leading them to their own demise.
108
You still haven't told us what we're doing here, man.
109
I did tell you.
110
Research.
111
Both Kat and Bobby's deaths are so quick because they are just unfortunate casualties in Clark's carelessness.
112
The Backrooms is ultimately about accountability and how the entities
113
that grow from us not owning up to those darker memories can take over our own lives, as well as those remotely close to us.
114
Now, as we see at the end of the film, Clark has no interest in taking accountability, and that's why he ends up getting killed.
115
Or so we think, we didn't actually see a body.
116
When Clark fully assimilates with the back rooms, leading Mary down there, where we see him playing family with the others, we finally learn that Clark was the entity the entire time.
117
Well, not Clark, but Captain Clark, a huge uncanny version of Clark's pirate persona that he uses to sell furniture.
118
It's a literal caricature of Clark's rage and failure.
119
He is the one that prowls the back rooms and destroys anyone who comes close.
120
He represents Clark's trauma within his mind.
121
However, we should point out
122
that Captain Clark doesn't lash out against the dinner table until after Mary gives Clark permission not to change.
123
Captain Clark is Clark's inner demon, his inner entity taking him whole.
124
There is nothing left of Clark but the monster that keeps spiraling
125
and refuses to let go of the past and the memories that are better left forgotten.
126
We also get a glimpse of Clark's past cruelty within this dinner scene from the reaction of one of the backroom's people, aka still lifes.
127
A still life is the name given to each of the entities within the backrooms, as seen in Parson's short film Backrooms Number 3 and in this film with the bearded still life,
128
the Archibald Leland stutter still life, and the redheaded still life.
129
The backrooms are made up of everything and nothing.
130
It's a mismatch of our own memories corroding into one another.
131
This place builds them.
132
Actually more like it remembers them.
133
Now that being said, I think it's safe to assume that the redheaded still life is representative of Clark's ex-wife, Barbara, who had kicked him out.
134
Other than being the only other woman we saw in the back rooms, this still life does have red hair, like Barbara, and this still life being Barbara is further cemented
135
when Clark scalps the still life and puts the hair onto Mary.
136
Now, when the Captain Clark entity begins to approach the dining table, the redheaded still life begins to panic, running off into the corner.
137
And this makes perfect sense because
138
if the entity is the embodiment of all of Clark's memories and secrets and traumas and rage, aka Clark's nights out drinking,
139
it would make sense that this memory of Clark's wife would fear that memory of Clark's rage.
140
But we have to remember these are Clark's memories, and with him being an unreliable narrator, he may have never let Mary in on just how cruel he can be.
141
That is until now.
142
Clark admits that he doesn't want to change and that he feels safer in the back rooms.
143
He feels safer not changing.
144
He doesn't want to admit to the hurt that he has caused to other people, so he feels safer going further and further into his own memories, regressing more and more.
145
Even if these memories have all slowly been dissolving away.
146
It's a real mess.
147
But also beautiful.
148
So this entire dinner scene, it was really well done.
149
If you're a horror fan, you know that when they sit down at a dinner table, shit's about to go down.
150
And man, did both of these actors really deliver.
151
So Clark and Mary, they begin to mirror a roleplay that they did during the first therapy session, with Clark reliving the night he was kicked out and Mary acting as his wife Barbara.
152
Within this first roleplay, Clark is apologetic for losing his temper, but he's quickly reassured by Mary that it's okay.
153
That, however, is completely flipped in this version at the end of the film, where now we are seeing Mary chew him out for nothing ever being his fault.
154
She tries to get Clark to see the truth, and how he is not the victim in his life, when in reality he is the person actively making his life worse.
155
She has tried her best to get him to escape the back rooms, but he's just continued to drag her and others deeper in with him.
156
Again, the back rooms representing his own trauma and anger that he just can't seem to pull himself out of.
157
Now, during Mary's grand escape from the back rooms, I love the detail that, though it stays in the same liminal space aesthetic,
158
it's clear that the rooms Mary runs through are different from those in Clark's complex.
159
She runs through a suburban neighborhood exterior, like the one that she tried to peek out at as a child.
160
The rooms themselves have more modern furniture, window chimes, couches, all stacked upon one another.
161
This is indicative of more of Mary's life than it is Clark's.
162
Now the idea that we all have our own back rooms
163
that begins to adapt to our memories is really intriguing and it adds a lot of depth to the movie, showing how our own emotions,
164
our own monster, can easily slip into someone else's backrooms.
165
And that's a commentary on how we all affect one another.
166
Essentially, you can easily slip into someone else's backrooms and take over their life.
167
And that's what I think this area is that we see Mary run out to at the end.
168
Visually, it's similar to Room 14D in the backroom's short Pitfalls.
169
But metaphorically, it's representative of all of our shared lives and collective backgrounds.
170
All of the memories of one another that we have impacted or just lived side by side to.
171
When you let your entity take over your life, it's just that easy to break out of your own backrooms, your subconscious, and then into someone else's.
172
And again, that's why Mary works so well as a character against Clark.
173
When her childhood is revealed, we learn that she essentially grew up in a backrooms of sorts.
174
Her mother even has the same sound cues as the entity within the backrooms.
175
This is a character that has escaped her own backrooms and watched it get demolished and forgotten, and she is now working on pushing forward against another character who is just giving up.
176
And it's actually sad.
177
The only time that it truly seemed that Clark was ready to take accountability
178
and leave the backrooms was at the very end when it was all too late.
179
Mary had already decided that there was nothing that she could do for Clark.
180
So in the end, she chooses herself.
181
And man, that ending fight was cathartic.
182
Mary was not going to let another person drag her down into those backrooms, and she took the authority over her own path.
183
Using that last remnant of her traumatic childhood, she breaks free from both the entity and Clark, as well as that baggage of her mother that has been holding her back.
184
Okay, so now on to that ending.
185
When Mary is found by the researchers wearing hazmat suits, we meet the scientist Phil.
186
He works for the Async Research Institute, which I mentioned earlier.
187
Now, during their discussion of the backrooms, Phil mentions how the company started by working on MRI machines before switching to exploring the backrooms.
188
And this is a detail that I think is especially interesting when we interpret the backrooms as our own subconscious.
189
MRIs map out your internal structures.
190
So for instance, a brain MRI would show a photo of your brain, much like the way the backrooms can act as a map of our own memories and trauma, which exist within our brain.
191
And the more times it remembers something, the less it does.
192
So Mary then asks if she is able to leave the facility that they brought her to, to which Phil gives a non-answer.
193
We then get a pseudo-answer within the next scene where we see a still life of Mary still in the back rooms.
194
Showing us that even if Mary is able to leave the back rooms, the memory of her never will.
195
We think that Mary very likely got away, or at least isn't fated to be left in the back rooms forever.
196
But the important thing to remember about the fun of the back rooms is that it's up to everyone's interpretation.
197
Everyone has their own personal backrooms because everyone has their own unique nostalgic memories.
198
The only ending for this film that Cain Parsons actually shot down was the it-was-all-a-dream type ending, but other than that, fury away.
199
Mary could have died in there, Mary could have escaped, and I think the what-if of it all adds to the mystery of the story.
200
And that was another aspect of the film that we really liked.
201
It allows the audience to come to their own conclusions about these characters
202
and have fun discussions about the film after the fact.
203
We open this film on two people that we should immediately be sympathetic toward.
204
A woman watching her childhood home be destroyed, and a man dealing with bills and graffiti on his local business.
205
We're not led to see Clark as the villain until the very end because in reality, he's not a villain.
206
He's just a guy.
207
He's by no means a gray guy, but he's a human, and only when he admits that he doesn't want to change for the better, that is when he truly merges with the backrooms.
208
Now another thing that this movie did is it proved
209
that you don't need a huge budget
210
and Hollywood's top director to make a horror film or really any film that means something.
211
This movie not only expanded on the backroom's lore, but it gave us two fantastic character performances.
212
That was our interpretation of this movie.
213
Special shout out to the writer of this video, Lee Mazzeo.
214
Let us know what you thought about the film down in the comments below and what you thought about that ending.
215
Did we get anything wrong?
216
Do you agree with our theories?
217
Do you disagree?
218
Have fun down in the comments.
219
Just be nice.
220
If you're new here, be sure to subscribe, hit the bell so you get notified every time we upload a new video for Screen Crush.
221
Oh, sh-
📺 Zelfde Kanaal
✨ Aanbevolen Video
C16
157 zinnen
BACKROOMS ENDING EXPLAINED
University StudentsWorking Adults
B21
582 zinnen
Cillian Murphy talks OPPENHEIMER, PEAKY BLINDERS, BATMAN, 28 DAYS LATER I Happy Sad Confused
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
685 zinnen
Do YOU Believe These Body Language Tropes?
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2119 zinnen
Fight Club - What it all Meant
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
98 zinnen
The Inevitable Downfall Of Westworld
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
285 zinnen
The Witching Season: The Blair Witch Was Fiction. This Witch Legend Wasn’t. | Moll Dyer
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
287 zinnen
RESIDENT EVIL | ANÁLISIS, REFERENCIAS Y CLAVES: Arriesga y gana (NOCHE CERO)
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B23
248 zinnen
Why Monsters University is Pixar's Greatest Underrated Masterpiece
Daily ConversationHigh School StudentsUniversity Students
B22
165 zinnen
Shut Eye | Horror Short Film | ALTER
Interview EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
414 zinnen
Rebecca Ferguson, Common, Tim Robbins and the cast of "Silo" learn about "larping" | Comic-Con
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
264 zinnen
Almost lost my mind
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Woordenschat en spreektips bij deze les
Deze video bevat 221 zinnen en 3597 woorden om na te spreken. Het gesproken deel duurt 17:39. De spreker praat snel, ongeveer 204 woorden per minuut, dus reken op verbonden en ingeslikte klanken. 82% van de woorden hoort bij de 3.000 meest gebruikte Engelse woorden; de rest kun je beter vooraf bekijken.
Belangrijke woorden in deze video
15 woorden uit de video die het leren waard zijn, met uitspraak en betekenis:
| Woord | Uitspraak | Betekenis |
|---|---|---|
| entity zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈɛn.tə.ti/ [-tʰi] | entiteit, wezen |
| earn werkwoord | /ɝn/ | verdienen |
| horror zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈhɒɹ.ə/ | gruwel |
| researcher zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈɹiˌsɝ.t͡ʃɚ/ | onderzoeker |
| lore zelfstandig naamwoord | /loɹ/ | overlevering |
| explore werkwoord | /ɪkˈsploɹ/ | onderzoeken, bestuderen |
| footage zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈfʊtɪd͡ʒ/ | filmmateriaal |
| reward zelfstandig naamwoord | /ɹɪˈwɔɹd/ | beloning, prijs |
| trauma zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈtɹɔm.ə/ | trauma |
| dragon zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈdɹæɡən/ | draak, lintworm |
| coin zelfstandig naamwoord | /ˈkoɪ̯n/ | munt, muntstuk |
| endless bijvoeglijk naamwoord | /ˈɛndlɪs/ | eindeloos |
| rage zelfstandig naamwoord | /ɹeɪd͡ʒ/ | furie, razernij |
| adapt werkwoord | /əˈdæpt/ | aanpassen |
| accountability zelfstandig naamwoord | /əˌkaʊn.təˈbɪl.ə.ti/ | verantwoording |
Phrasal verbs die je zult horen
| Woord | Betekenis |
|---|---|
| take over werkwoord | overnemen |
| break down werkwoord | stukgaan, kapot gaan |
| end up werkwoord | belanden, terechtkomen |
| give away werkwoord | weggeven |
| give up werkwoord | zich overgeven |
| go down werkwoord | afdalen |
| kick out werkwoord | eruit trappen |
| pick up werkwoord | oppakken, optillen |
Grammatica in deze video
De structuren die de spreker het meest gebruikt, met de exacte woorden uit de video:
| Structuur | In de video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — iets dat eerder begon en nog bezig is | I've been playing · has been holding |
| Present perfect have/has + voltooid deelwoord — iets uit het verleden dat nu nog telt | have actually heard · have definitely seen · has hurt |
| Lijdende vorm be + voltooid deelwoord — het gaat om wat er gebeurt, niet om wie het doet | be trapped · be made · being said |
| Betrekkelijke bijzinnen who / which + zin — extra informatie over een persoon of ding | someone who has · people who work · anyone who comes |
Uitspraak om op te letten
De spreker gebruikt 30 samentrekkingen en verkorte vormen, zoals you're, we're, doesn't. Spreek ze kort uit, zoals je ze hoort.
- De “th”-klanken: unhealthy /ʌnˈhɛl.θi/, aesthetic /ɛsˈθɛ.tɪk/, thread /ˈθɹɛd/, theater /ˈθi(ə)tɚ/, earthquake /ˈɝθkweɪk/
- De klanken “sh” en “zh”: essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/, representation /ˌɹɛp.ɹə.zɛnˈteɪ.ʃən/
- Lange woorden — let op de klemtoon: entity /ˈɛn.tə.ti/ [-tʰi], accountability /əˌkaʊn.təˈbɪl.ə.ti/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/
Zo oefen je met deze video
- Luister de hele video één keer zonder te spreken en noteer de woorden die je niet kent.
- Begin op 0,75× snelheid, spreek zin voor zin na en ga terug naar normale snelheid zodra het makkelijk gaat.
- Neem jezelf op en vergelijk met het origineel; let daarbij op woorden als entity, earn, horror.
Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?
Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.