Monthly Archives: June 2026

Backrooms: Liminal Horror and Something Older

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“No Matter Where You Go, there you are”. Dr. B. Banzai PhD, MD, MFA

I had intended to see the new horror film Backrooms on its opening weekend but a cluster of migraines kept me at home and it wasn’t until this past weekend that I managed to get out to the theater to catch this latest horror sensation.

A24

Backrooms, the brainchild of Kane Parsons and born of his internet posted short subjects, centers on Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) a man for whom life has not turned out at all the way he had hoped or wanted. Turned out of his home by divorce and living in his discount furniture store Clark listlessly seeks help from a therapist, Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) but clearly struggles to make progress. Late one evening Clark discovers a portal in the sub-floor of his store that leads to an uninhabited and seemingly endless series of rooms and corridors laid out by some sort of inaccessible dream logic. Exploring the labyrinth Clark discovers terrors that echo his own distraught mental heath but remain beyond comprehension.

Liminal Horror entered the lexicon quite recently in 2019 with images of abandoned malls and disused spaces appearing on internet chatrooms and message boards. By 2022 Parsons began uploading short subjects of CGI crafted liminal horror to his YouTube account, developing a talent and fandom that eventually led to the feature film Backrooms with its attendant success and recognition. As a subgenre of horror liminal is the most mood defined. Where supernatural horror ranges from ghosts to demons, to witchcraft, and slashers are very specifically about a series of gruesome and on-screen ‘kills’ and zombies, either undead or virally induced, are about the implacable masses, liminal horror has no clearly defined monster at its core but consists almost entirely of atmosphere. In its purest form it would be possible to craft something that is recognizably liminal horror from a single still image. Backrooms, in its expanded feature film form, is more than liminal horror but rests, in my opinion, on a subgenre of horror just over a century old, cosmic horror.

Cosmic horror, perhaps best illustrated by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, is the subgenre that while often reduced to tentacled monstrosities is at its center about the relationship between humanity and reality, but that reality as presented in the piece is far stranger and utterly incomprehensible to the puny human mind rendering it terrifying. It is not that there are simply great areas that lie unknown to humanity, but that reality itself is unknowable and our pitiful understanding of it is utterly in error. The horrific nature of the universe cannot be explained because it cannot be understood at all.

The strange, nightmarish world that Clark discovers in the sub-levels of his furniture store is never explained, with hints at the film’s conclusion that this is not the only occurrence. While the space, its shape, and its nature is twisted by the psyches that invade it, those psyches do not create nor do they dictate it, merely influence the bizarre and unpredictable events and forms it takes.  The Backrooms are not constructed of timber and drywall; their nature is beyond human understanding and realizing just how far beyond our meager intellect it lies is the true nature of its horror.

I both rejoice in the tremendous success Backrooms is finding at the box office and fear it as well. There will be terrible pressure for a sequel, for a continuation of the story and if that comes to pass then each iteration will rob a little more of the mystery, will seek to explain a little more the terror until nothing at all is left to experience.

I opened this review with a quote from a classic cult film of the 80s because the Backrooms are the dark interpretation of that saying, no matter where you go you take yourself with you, and that includes the demons that haunt our every footstep and the loops of destructive behaviors we are unable to unlearn.

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Weekend Movie Plans

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Unless I am again derailed by migraines I have plans to see two films in the theaters this weekend.

Tonight, Friday night, I want to go out and catch Backrooms. It is so nice to see a wider selection of horror than the slashers and murderous home invaders subgenres. I have nothing against those types of movies which are just more often than not dull and tedious to me. The black-gloved killers of giallo are more interesting, but they too can become rather uninspired and repetitive rather quickly. Backrooms looks to be much more a vibe than a plot, which I will wager either works very well or not at all and I am looking forward to finding out.

Tomorrow, June 6th, strikes me as an ironically perfect day to see the D-Day invasion film Pressure, a film that looks to focus on the vital and uncertain weather forecasts that determined the success of the Normandy invasions. I do know as a historical fact that one of the vital elements for that invasion and the Battle for the North Atlantic was the Allied control of Iceland, occupied since its actual controlling government, the Danish Kingdom, was under Axis domination.

Sunday evening, after my sweetie-wife has retired for the night, I plan to watch the next in the Plaid Project, Johnny Eager, a movie I know almost nothing about.

But, like I said much of this turns on if eye strain doesn’t trigger yet another series of migraines.

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Widow’s Bay

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More and more it is becoming apparent that Apple TV, the streaming service with an apparently non-existent promotional budget while boasting fantastic budgets for their films and television programs, is offering some of the best series for anyone streaming at home. The latest addition to their already impressive lineup is the horror comedy Widow’s Bay.

AppleTVThe titular location is a small and economically depressed fishing community on a scrap of an island off the New England coast. The mayor, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), determined to bring tourist dollars to the town, ignores the pleas of local crank Wyck (Stephen Root) that the island is cursed, assuring Loftis that only Death and Horror can come from bringing in strangers; pleas that Loftis ignores and over the course of episodes comes to understand that Wyck is not a crank and that a curse lays upon them all.

Widow’s Bay is the creation of writer/showrunner Katie Dippold whose comedy chops include Parks and Recreation, but professionally this series represents her first foray into horror. The premier episode (people keep calling the first episode of a series the ‘pilot’ but a pilot is a very different beast, for an excellent definition see Pulp Fiction), is quite light on the horror elements relying on a single image that promises horrors to come but is principally concerned with the comedy of the eclectic and quirky set of characters. However, episode two sets both a tone of unease and building tension that releases with a fast and visceral bit of horror that then continues throughout the series. Where the series lands, I cannot say as Apple TV, wisely in my opinion, has stuck with the week-by-week release model that builds better word of mouth than Netflix’s binge method of releasing the entire slate of episodes at the same time.

So far, my favorite episode is number 4, Beach Reads, which gives us context for what I feel is the most relatable citizen of the community, Loftis’ assistant Patricia (Kate O’Flynn). A social outcast from her age cohort and someone desperate to be seen in her beige anonymity Patricia, after finding a mysterious self-help book, attempts to reinvent herself and how the people perceive her only to find that she has somehow stepped into a folk horror with echoes of The Wicker Man.

The comedic elements of Widow’s Bay are not over-the-top farce or outlandish absurdity though it would be difficult to call this purely character-based humor. Rather the humor is always just off from center, the characters are nearly realistic but never quite there, it might be best described as ‘uncanny valley’ comedy. A perfect example can be found in episode two, Lodgings and the board games found in the lobby of the island’s quaint hostel. No boardgame company is going to produce Daddy’s Home the game of avoiding the drunken and violent parent when they return home but it provides a perfect complement to the unease of the episode as Loftis, on a dare, stays in the hotel’s haunted suite.

While the first episode did not fully engage me I was intrigued enough to come back and then found the series to my taste. I look forward to completing the season and hopefully it lands well.

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Not The Man I Used to Be

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90 days ago, I embarked on the less than thrilling adventure of trying to lose weight by way of dieting. I make no judgment against people who are employing the GLP-1 agonists to help them curb their appetite and shed their weight it is simply that I would prefer to at least attempt my weight loss by way of diet first.

What had worked for me in the past, though there had been a few bumps and minor issues that I had found annoying, was using the Weight Watchers app. The program, though not very expensive, is not free and works by a fairly simple process. Each food is assigned a point value, roughly correlating to its calories, fat, and simple carbohydrate composition. Some, like fresh fruits and vegetables, are given a value of zero points. Participants log their meals and snacks, tracking the points and attempting to remain under a daily allotment. To give a person ‘wiggle room’ should they choose the less strict program, which I have, there is also a pool of points known as ‘weeklies’ that can serve as a buffer for any time a dieter exceeds their daily limit. Any surplus points at the end of a day, up to no more than four, rolls over into the weeklies pool, providing a little more flexibility. There is a vast database of processed food that can be easily searched by way of their barcodes on the packaging, making logging them quick and easy. In the newest version of the app, one can even take an image of your food and have the estimated point values located by way of an A.I. engine.

I have been on this program now for 90 days and I have managed to cut out nearly all of the ‘bad’ snacking that had been contributing to my weight gain. To date I have lost 27 lbs and not felt overly deprived except on the occasional day when the craving for something rich and sweet hits particularly hard. The only week where I consumed all my weeklies was my birthday week and all in all I think that one is one I can let slide.

I still have a way to go before I am close to my goal but this time around, I am finding the process a bit easier.

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Now is the Spring of Our Electronic Failures

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April and May turned out to be not so great for several of my electronic devices.  The first to give me troubles was my Xbox One, when it began dropping the wireless connection between both my controller and my headset. Once it progressed far enough that I couldn’t watch a complete YouTube video or play a single session of online Call of Duty, I bit the bullet and took the device in for repairs. It took two attempts and replacing the chips and transmitters for both the Bluetooth and WiFi components, but the repairs seem to be holding.

Next went the 55″ LCD Television. I have already documented that journey with a couple of other posts. While the screen had not failed completely, the faint, but growing in intensity, lines across the left quarter of the screen had become too pronounced to ignore. It was a blessing that the replacement OLED set ended up costing less than the set it replaced.

I had thought my device troubles were in the past and then after watching the Blu-ray of The Body Snatcher, still the best performance of Karloff’s career and a criminally underseen film, my region-free player went belly up. The power light remained lit and the tray refused to open. I tried to reset the player, even leaving it unplugged from power for more than a day, but nothing could cause it to cycle. Tomorrow the replacement player, this time one capable of displaying 4K discs in addition to being region-free (I had been using my Xbox One to play4K titles), arrives.

So, that is nearly my entire entertainment system either repaired or replaced in less than six weeks. On the bright side, this OLED television looks fantastic and hopefully the new player will complement it well. I have a birthday gift from my sweetie-wife, the 4K edition of Godzilla Minus One(A film that surpasses the 1954 original) that I look forward to watching once everything is set-up and running.

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