Knee-jerk review: "Backrooms"

1. There's some old-fashioned jump scares, yes.  But mostly this thing is powered by a sense of growing dread and surreal weirdness.
2. Mark Duplass alert.
3. There are certainly familiar horror movie elements, like the fear of being stalked by some unseen bad guy -- there's also a fun but kind of stale "Stranger Things"-style twist at the end -- but for the most part this felt wholly original and inventive.  Some really crazy "what in the world am I watching?" moments.
4. Renate Reinsve is a little stiff.
5. Opening sequence is dynamite.
6. The movie's set in 1990, but the set design is 100% late 1980s and chock full of ugly decor ripped right out of our teenaged memories.
7. So who did install those creepy off-kilter breakers switches?
8. What helps makes the movie so memorable is that so much of it's ambiguous.  While we get the overall gist of what's happening, there's a whole host of strange, smaller details that just aren't fully spelled out.  You really have to read between the lines to piece everything together.  The family Cheese Fry have had many "did you notice..?" discussions sharing pet theories about What It All Means.
9. There's no way we'd be able to find out way back out of that maze.
10. We went into this with only the most basic understanding of the "backrooms" premise, which is probably the way to do it.  We, of course, conducted extensive, obligatory internet sleuthing after the fact to learn more.  Some of what we saw in the movie comes right from the internet series.
11. It's true: the buzz of harsh fluorescents can be pretty oppressive.
12. Bonus points to the Little Fry for figuring out what that little radio was broadcasting.
13. So is Clark a good person or not?  Discuss.
14. Palm sweating moment: the stairs up to the ceiling.  You'll know it when you see it.
15. "It's like describing a dog to someone who's never seen a dog."

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