Story Movie
Clark, a lonely furniture store owner, can’t seem to get over his divorce and is seeing a therapist. He spends the night at work and one day discovers a passage to another dimension. So Clark finds himself in an endless labyrinth of yellow rooms and hallways, where space follows its own logic, and something terrifying might be lurking around every corner.
Review 4K Movie
The psychologist (Reinsve), with her mentor-like spiel of clichés straight out of a textbook, is simply background noise to me—an indispensable social attribute of civilization. It’s not even entirely clear whether the film is mocking the field of psychology or whether it ultimately triumphs; the psychologist’s gaze is just that confident. Childish—fine, but I certainly wouldn’t let just anyone condescendingly pry into my mind. Psychologists, in my view, are mostly charlatans spouting verbiage that only leads us deeper into a dead end. Psychologist: “Open the window, tear down the walls.” And they show us satisfied, empty-headed fools in the commercials. As if to say, we need (well, of course) to forget our traumatic past. I’m a writer nobody knows, and for me this is a highly dubious recommendation, since a difficult past provides invaluable, inspiring material. Just like books on psychology—they only weigh you down even more, forcing you to move like a robot according to a set pattern, destroying your personality. From what I’ve observed, people obsessed with psychology textbooks and so-called “coaching” are nervous and unhappy. The psychologist herself is, after all, problematic. Perhaps the protagonist needed medication and a good psychiatrist—which is a real, serious profession. My apologies.
All right. Let’s list some of the psychologist’s mantra-like talking points, which are stated right at the beginning and then repeated like a zombie-inducing refrain. “Everyone has patterns and habits that keep us going in circles, leading us to the same decisions over and over again. Each time, we think they’ll lead to something new, but they don’t.” And yet the brain seeks the path of least resistance. The path you paved in childhood was precisely what protected you. You learned to push people away before they could hurt you. As an adult, you’re still right where you started.” Doesn’t it seem to you, dear reader, that this framework is far too presumptively generalized? However, it really does work for the main character. But there’s no point in blaming the creators too much here. It all started with a laboratory maze belonging to the fictional company Async, which had previously worked on tomographs. The maze appeared instantly as a result of an experiment in a magnetic field perturbation device. This was supposed to save billions of dollars on housing construction and provide other perks. The series, in general, features a lot of science: physics, biology. In this film, however (understandably, so as not to overwhelm or scare off the general audience), there is, alas, a complete vacuum in this regard. The disappointingly nonsensical ending slightly lowers the rating. So, first there was the maze. And the psychologist is called upon to tailor the problem to the answer—that is, the essence, or rather, to put it in layman’s terms, the crux of the matter.
And the hero (Ejiofor) confirms the psychologist’s words.
The pull of the labyrinth is, after all, both repetition—that is, moving in a circle—and the path of least resistance. Yes, there is a moment of overcoming obstacles in these corridors, but the direction of movement is predetermined—even if there are several possible paths—whereas in open spaces, the number of directions is nearly infinite, so much so that one becomes lost in the face of boundless choice. Let’s recall here (I doubt anyone has done so before me) the Greek’s “Types of Kindness.” The point is that a herd-minded person, so accustomed to imposed frameworks (whether from the state leadership, advertising, or, I don’t know, a film critic blogger who chews something up in his own way, leading people to believe they’ve formed their own opinion), loses the ability to think critically and analyze independently; he becomes disoriented by the freedom granted to him and longs to return to a state of bondage. The protagonist himself sought escapism from the ordinary world, where nothing works out for him and he finds no meaning in existence, into a world where his thirst for discoveries, mysteries, and solutions is satisfied. Most importantly, this space and its inhabitants can only inflict physical harm, since they lack complex psychology and facial expressions. Speech. They lack speech! Isn’t that a blessing? The place, as becomes clear as the film unfolds, is an endless, phantasmagorical jumble of real rooms and real people (seemingly from the protagonist’s life), distorted beyond recognition through countless iterations. They “remember themselves incorrectly.”
There is a psychological phenomenon caused by crossing doorways. Many people have found themselves in a situation where they walked into a room from another room for a specific purpose and couldn’t remember exactly what they had intended to do. In many cases, this is caused by crossing doorways, which act as a kind of boundary between events for our brains. This allows us to erase unpleasant memories and forget them.
Come on, admit it—admit that the part about a civilized, normal life weighed on you; you wanted to get into those yellowish corridors of magic as quickly as possible. How we longed in our youth to escape reality into, say, “Half-Life,” into that reality, to exist there. It disconnects us from existential problems. The author of these lines hasn’t played a game in about 15 years. I’m too lazy to even start anything. But in the passive role of a viewer (especially of a feature film), it’s very comfortable and enjoyable. Even setting ideology aside, it’s enjoyable. It’s nice to reminisce about one’s youth, at the very least. The deliberate effect of a handheld VHS camcorder with film defects is, after all, also a touch of youth. All these objects immersed in textures, characters with whimsical appearances—it’s as if they were clumsily generated by early neural networks, which adds a strange kind of charm. A mystical soundscape, a mystical atmosphere. An atmosphere that’s painfully cozy.
Geek Kane Parsons has created his own completely alternative universe. It once occurred to me that in the future, instead of cultivated fields (with synthetic food in abundance), they’ll build the wildest things—for example, mega-mazes—where people will satisfy their craving to get their thrills.
And this is a good antidote to the notorious “music video” mentality—that fleeting, petty-bourgeois mindset—since every detail (thankfully, there aren’t many) is examined in stillness. It’s worth noting the most important detail, the reason why “Backrooms” has become so beloved by introverts. It’s the silence. To feel yourself, to listen to yourself. Because you’re left to your own devices. And here’s the litmus test: are you interesting to yourself—and, consequently, to others? The silence doesn’t have to be absolute; earplugs aren’t the answer. You need some kind of background noise. Well, I don’t know—the hum of a barge passing down the river. Here, it’s the hum of the labyrinth’s fluorescent lights, the inner workings of which are explored in detail in the series. Other sounds—distant and strange ambient noises—mingle in as well. In this age of shrill chatter, a moment of detachment, contemplation, and meditation is a rare and vital thing, a lifeline. Salvation in the broadest sense.
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