Backrooms should’ve starred a white man…

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:01][music] [music] [music] [clears throat and cough] The back rooms should have starred a white man. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I know how that sounds, but just hear me out. Before I explain myself, let it be known that I'm not saying the acting was bad. This is not me saying a white man would have done better, just that it would have looked better, considering how things play out in the movie.

[00:00:40]Specifically for me, the last act. I'm going to go through the plot and when we get to that part of the story, hopefully you'll understand where I'm coming from.

[00:00:48]You may not agree, and that's completely fine. This isn't a hill I'm willing to die on, but it is a hill I'm going to preach to you from for 20-ish minutes.

[00:00:57]If you've been on the internet at all in the past [music] 5 years, you've probably heard of this mysterious fictional space called the back rooms.

[00:01:04]It started on 4chan with people posting images that felt off or paranormal or whatever, and someone posted the image you see behind me. Then someone replied to this ominous image with what is referred to as the first description of the back rooms. And if you're not careful and no clip out of reality, you'll end up in the back rooms where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights, and approximately 600 million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering nearby because it sure as hell [music] served you. From there we get creepy pastas, short films, and finally after years of hype a proper movie. [music] The movie opens found footage style of this guy who I later found out is Avan Joia similly trapped in the back rooms. Beck is in the back rooms and he's huffing.

[00:01:57]He's puffing and being presumably chased by one of the many entities that live in this hellscape [music] of an office building. And the video ends with Beck unfortunately being caught by the scary spooky demon. RP.

[00:02:08]>> Rest in peace, Pop Smoke.

[00:02:11]>> Rest in peace who? Pop Smoke.

[00:02:13]>> After this, we cut to a shot at this pirate themed furniture store, which is owned by our MC, who was clearly not [music] written to be black. And this is where my gripes with this film ultimately come from. Having a black person play a character that wasn't written to be black, is not inherently an issue, but it is something I noticed [music] in film and TV that I like to overanalyze. Take Zenaia's roles for example. Euphoria is the first show that comes to mind. Zenaia is great in this role, but what I did notice while watching was that it felt as if the show didn't really concern itself with race, which is strange because some people love Euphoria because of how quote unquote realistic it is. There are entirely too many white people in that school for there to not be at least one plotline about Nate saying some horrendously racist [ __ ] about McKay's genetics, helping him be a better athlete or some [ __ ] My point here is that I find it clear Sam Leon didn't write Rue with race in mind. Now, do I find that to be an issue in Euphoria?

[00:03:11]Not really, if I'm being honest. I mean, do we want Sam Leon to write a black experience? Hell no. But that brings us back to the back rooms where I did find it to be an issue. We learned via therapy session with a white woman that our black MC is going through a divorce with the white woman, has a failing furniture store, and is overall down on his luck. He's also, dare I say, kind of a dick. They do a roleplay exercise where he's himself and a therapist's ex-wife. And during this, we learned that he's upset that he paid for her law school or was paying all the billables while she was in law school or something. And this paired with his alcoholism led to a major argument where things were said that that can't be unsaid. I called him a dick because during this roleplay, he says something along the lines of, "Because someone won't get off their fat ass and work." I clutch my metaphorical pearls. From what we've seen from pictures, his ex-wife isn't even plus-siz. So, he's just being rude and body shaming and assigning work ethic to body weight. But anyway, later our MC is having electrical issues and has over an electrician to check things out. And on the fuse box, there's an extra set of switches that our MC is unfamiliar with. The electrician says they don't seem to control anything and are just kind of there for some reason.

[00:04:26]And later that night, our MC flips the mysterious switches and discovers these are of course attached to the back rooms. And for some godforsaken reason, after no clipping through a wall into the back rooms, he starts exploring [ __ ] going down random holes, paws in the corridors and [ __ ] You put me in the situation, I'm assuming the government is involved, and turning around immediately before I end up being hunted down by the CIA. So, our black MC [music] freaks out and the next day he tells his therapist all about it while she considers if she may need to 501 him. 505 him. No, that's a song. I don't know the numbers, but it's implied she's listening to see if she may need to grippy sock him. He reads her mind and says, "Just you wait therapist. I'm going to come back with proof." And if you know how horror movies go, that [ __ ] is not going to happen. So, in this effort to get proof of the back rooms, he decides to make his employees explore this place with him, which is definitely against some type of labor law. But as they're exploring, the shaggy coded employee gets clapped. And [music] then our MC gets separated from the other golf gfcoded employee, and that's when we cut to our MC's white woman therapist. The therapist, not hearing from [music] her client, and growing concerned, decides to stop by the furniture store. The place is obviously abandoned, and she explores until she finds the same entry point that our MC used to get into the bathrooms. After exploring like a dumbass, she finds her MC and he's speaking super quietly to her and she's like, "Why are you whispering?" And he's like, "Because we're too loud to hear us." And she's like, "What that mean?" Dead out of [ __ ] nowhere. This scared the [ __ ] out of me. By the way, our black man MC [ __ ] strangles this therapist white lady until unconsciousness. There's a lot of things I called before they happened. I did not expect that to happen. Great fake out. I jumped, Pete, and pissed. No notes. The therapist awaits sometime later in a days, tied to a chair at a dinner table with our MC sitting across. And at this point in the movie, I got a bit confused because our MC, while surely a bit dickish, [music] didn't seem to be the kidnapping and strangling type. It felt like a big jump in personality. Like, what the [ __ ] was that about? But when our therapist regains consciousness, we get somewhat of an answer to this. Our black MC, who is officially off his rocker, forces the therapist to roleplay with him. the exact same exercise she had him do in her office. Same rules as well. He throws in the same line about someone not getting off their fat ass [music] and it was just as much of an ick as the first time, but this time the therapist breaks character and when she does, she gives us the monologue of a lifetime. A reading like no water. I wanted to clap when it was over. This scene is by far my favorite in the movie. To summarize, she essentially gives him the it's you speech that Todd gives Bojack in the Sad Horsey Show. This is the second film this week I've seen with a man allergic to self-reflection. The other was Obsession, which I enjoyed more than this if I'm being honest, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, in what I say is a twist of events, our MC, instead of being like, "You're right. I need to change," just admits that he doesn't want to change, that this strange realm is the only place he's felt normal. That he's grown to not even really want to leave because the real world isn't for him anymore, which I guess explains why he's still there. But what it doesn't explain is why he had to decapitate our golf coded GF employee.

[00:07:36]Oh yeah, he did that. We see her head in the fridge. Anyway, after revealing he's low-key trash and belongs in this dumpster, the therapist says he should do exactly that after letting her out.

[00:07:46]Things are calm. Our MC has realized the error of their ways and the therapist is about to be untied and let free. So, of course, that means something bad is about to happen. And it was here, my dear viewer, where I realized that I am entirely too woke and started to wish that they gave this role to a white man.

[00:08:03]So, some quick lore, I guess. This space apparently copies things people remember, but wrongly, it makes people as well, but as they are remembered or perceived or I don't [ __ ] know. Go see the movie. Anyway, this monstrous pirate copy version of the MC appears and kills our MC. Oh, yeah. The furniture store has a pirate themed. I'm not sure if I mentioned that or not. And a small tidbit about this pirate theme.

[00:08:26]Our MC does a commercial as a pirate, right? But when the therapist enters the store, there's this pirate mannequin in the entrance that I thought was supposed to be a mannequin of our MC, but it's white. Which made me realize, oh, wait, it's not supposed to be him. Just a just a generic pirate, I guess. But then that made me wonder why not have a matching mannequin if he's the face of the store.

[00:08:45]Uh, I don't know. Just something I noticed. Where was I? All right. Monster pirate black man. Watching this monstrous version of a black man chase around this terrified white lady felt spiritually American in the most derogatory way possible. I'm watching this and wondering why it bothers me so much. And I come to the conclusion that I don't think I like when black people are the antagonist in movies towards white people. And in this movie in particular, he's just not a nice person to any white woman on screen, minus the therapist, I guess. But even then, just because he didn't cut her head off like he did our gooff gf, he still strangled her. And I haven't forgotten how he talks about his ex-wife. And it's just the fact that he's a black man doing all this to white woman spiritually American. I guess what I'm yapping about is we're villainized enough outside of TV and movies, so I get a knee-jerk reaction to seeing it happen in fiction as well. I think for me, it's just seeing a dark-skinned black man being the villain to several white women giving me pause. There's this long-standing American ass trope or white trope, I guess, where the white woman is viewed as this fragile being that must be [music] protected from the savage black. And this movie kind of reminded me of that racial trope, even though I feel I can reliably say that it definitely wasn't the intention of the writer. I'm not even sure how to properly articulate any more than I already have. I'm fine with colorblind casting until you make us the villains to a bunch of white women. I guess this take needs to be baked a bit more, but that's what sharing my thoughts to strangers on the internet is for.

[00:10:16]Overall, I'd say this is a good movie, I guess, if I turn off the Dr. Umar part of my brain. Have you seen The Back Rooms? I love to hear your thoughts and not takes because there's no discourse on it that I've seen. Am I being too woke? Do you think I need to shut up and enjoy the movie or did you have similar thoughts? Let me know. If you haven't seen the movie, this isn't me saying not to watch it, by the way. I still enjoyed it overall, I say, but I just had these thoughts that I want to share. I give it a soft six if I turn off the Dr. Umar part of my brain. Overall, fun experience. Do you like my hot takes?

[00:10:48]Donate to my Kofi to support my grad school endeavors for even more hot takes cuz that's why I learned to hop on the internet and yap about things related to my field of study or maybe join my Patreon or not. I'm a YouTuber, not a cop. I don't know. But bye.

[00:11:15]What's going on?