backrooms and obsession are...

[00:00:00]No, no, no, no, no, no, no. [music] Hello, welcome or welcome back to my channel.  My name is Nick, and I hate horror movies. I've honestly just always hated the horror genre,  and not because I think it's like bad per se, but just because like my anxiety couldn't handle  it. I remember back one day in fourth grade, my class decided to watch Goosebumps as just  like a fun activity. And I had to sit in the hallway for the entire time because I was  like, "This is terrifying." And it was so embarrassing at the time because I was the  only person who seemed to have a problem with it. But I was literally like 9 years old, so I  don't really blame myself. But even recently, a ton of horror movies have come out, and I've  just had no interest in seeing them because like, you know, I--I personally just don't really find  joy in being scared. Same reason why I hate roller coasters. But this summer has been different,  okay? I am medicated, and I am a brand new me. So, that means that when I heard all of the buzz like  everybody else about Obsession and Backrooms, I knew I had to go see them because I am a  self-proclaimed movie lover, which I don't think you actually have to self-proclaim that. I  think you can just say it. But, I love movies, and I've heard so much about them, and I've heard that  they're going to be really, really incredible. So, when they came out, I was like, "Okay, I'm going  to put my hatred of horror aside and I'm going to go enjoy these movies." And I did. I actually  really, really loved them. I saw Backrooms in theaters with my friend group, and then I saw  Obsession on my own after it came out on Prime, and I was just like so blown away by both of them.  I was so happy that they got such good reception because the quality was THERE. It's so refreshing  to see all of these like original and sometimes like slightly weird concepts sort of like breaking  into the mainstream. Because we're all so used to all of this like slop content. And I've seen so  many people talking about the whole like "bean mouth" animation trend going on with like Disney  and Pixar. There's of course all of the Disney live-action remakes and sequels that they're  doing, and everybody's tired of those. Most people are not super excited to see all of these movies  come out because it's like it's nothing original.

[00:02:07]It's nothing fresh. But I feel like these ones  just really like scratch that itch that I had for that new original content. And one thing that I  absolutely adore is that Obsession got this great, great reputation and reception despite being such  a like small film. I think they filmed it over the span of 3 weeks or something like that, and it  only had a $750,000 budget. Now, I know people who aren't familiar with like the movie-making  process might think that that's a lot of money.

[00:02:34]It's not. Making movies is so expensive. And even  Backrooms alone cost $10 million to make. So, if you compare these two movies that I've seen people  say are on equal footing in terms of quality, and Backrooms had literally over 13 times the budget  that Obsession did. It's just incredible. And now that I've picked up a film minor at my college,  I can be like one of those people that's really like critical of movies, and I can be like, "Um,  actually, that's a film, not a movie." So that's going to be me today. Now, I have always been the  kind of person to look up absolutely everything about a movie after I watch it. I want to hear  everything that the director has to say. I want to know everything about the actors' backgrounds.  I want to know everything. But usually, it just kind of ends there. You know, I look up everything  about the film and then it slowly fizzles out, and I find the next thing to obsess over. But with  these two movies, I found that they lingered in my mind for so long. And of course, a large part  of that was all of the buzz surrounding them on social media. Every time I would open TikTok,  I would see some new Obsession TikTok. But it wasn't just that. It was just something about the  core message or the core moral of the movie that just kept turning over in my mind. And I activated  my new analytical brain. And I was like, I'm going to get to the center of this. I'm going to figure  out exactly what it is that makes these movies so captivating and so different than any other movies  that we've seen recently. And today, I'm going to tell you guys why. Just a heads up, there will be  spoilers for both Backrooms and Obsession in this video. So if you haven't seen them yet, highly  recommend you watch them and then come back to this video. Also, I've tried to avoid watching too  many analyses of the movies because I wanted to come to my own conclusions. So if something that  I say is similar to something you've heard before, great minds think alike. And if I say something  completely novel and interesting, then that's why this is quality content. Let's go. [music]  So, a little bit of background on Backrooms. I'm pretty familiar with the concept of the backrooms  because I've been on the internet for years and it's been a hot internet topic for years. But just  for some context, the backrooms are essentially an infinite nonsensical liinal space inspired by one  image posted to 4chan in 2019. And that was widely popularized by a creator named Cain Parsons. He  released his own found footage type exploration of the backrooms on his own YouTube channel. And he  eventually directed the 2026 movie that I'm going to be talking about today. Now, the movie follows  Clark, a failed architect, as he tries to save his failing furniture store and eventually stumbles  into the backrooms in the store's basement. We watch as he tries to reconcile this new reality  he's found with the one he already knew, falling deeper into hysteria as he goes. I wrote  that myself, by the way. I thought that the movie, the concept, the execution, everything about it  was so immaculate. I feel like the team perfectly captured the essence of like unending panic and  just like the insane atmosphere of a seemingly infinite indoor space. I'm sure people have  mentioned this before, but the concept of the backrooms and everything in it being indoors, it  so perfectly adds this feeling of claustrophobia and surrealism because it's like how can you be  stuck in this massive massive place and never even see the sky? How can you never step outside?  I feel like this was perfectly perfectly depicted when Clark's therapist, Dr. Mary Klene. She's in  the misremembered version of Clark's furniture store and she runs to the front doors basically  thinking that it's going to be like the doors on the in the real world. And she runs to the door  only to see that they are blocked on the other side by a wall. Like there's truly no way out.  What would have been the outside in, you know, the real world is just another wall. Just another  place for you to turn right and look for another door. I thought that the found footage shots were  some of the film's strongest moments and it was really reminiscent of Kane's original YouTube  series. I feel like they really kept you like on the edge of your seat. Like they kept you so  engaged and immersed in a way that traditional cinematography doesn't because with traditional  cinematography, you're seeing things from the character's perspective, but also from the  director's perspective. They can frame a shot or do a certain angle or zoom or anything like that.  There's a ton of different editing techniques that guide the audience into a specific perception  of the film or the scene. Like maybe the camera will be pointing at the person talking, but you  can still see some space over their shoulder, so you know that something is going to happen  behind them. Or a dramatic zoom on the character's face can tell you like what they're feeling or how  you as an audience member should feel watching the scene. But by showing everything from first person  point of view of Clark or Bobby or anybody going through the backrooms, it really added an entire  layer of suspense because you don't know what's going to happen next. Just like the characters,  you don't know what's going to be around the next corner that they turn. There's no moment where  you're really bracing for a jump scare because suddenly everything gets quiet and still. No,  it's like you don't know if there's going to be a jump scare or if it's just going to be a heap  of computers or furniture that they're going to see. It's like it truly helps us see from the  perspective of our protagonist or whoever we're following at the moment and it makes us care  for them that much more. Even in the very first scene when the async employee gets attacked in the  backrooms when he's isolated, you feel that like dread and fear with him despite knowing him for  literally like 2 minutes all because you're forced to see from his perspective for a little bit.  You're hoping that he gets out safe because for a moment you're him. From a narrative standpoint,  I already knew a lot about like what was going to happen in the film going into it. So, I wasn't  necessarily like scared at the like visually scary moments, but I could definitely feel that like  worsening sense of dread as we move through the story. Like with every choice that Clark and the  crew make, you can tell that we're moving closer to somebody's death. Like when Clark first goes  down into the basement in the middle of the night, when he walks through the door, when Bobby and  Cat follow him, when they're exploring that really steep hallway, you just know that somebody, if  not everybody, is going to die. Every step that they take in the backrooms is literally a step in  the wrong direction. My personal favorite part of like the visual depiction of the backrooms is the  random objects that are scattered throughout it and specifically the objects that are partially  clipped into like the walls or the ceilings or the floors cuz this is something that we see a lot  in say settings like gaming like item collisions.

[00:09:02]But to see it in like a real setting was just  so eerie. It It makes my skin crawl. It's like a glitch in generation or like a glitch in the  matrix or like the objects already existed and then the setting just like spontaneously spawned  around them. I love that sequence in Mary's mind when we're like falling through the floor of her  childhood home and we see everything getting like progressively more like warped and misremembered.  It was so unsettling to me. I felt so grossed out watching it, but I watched it so many times  because I was just like it's just so wrong. And then when you add in all of the items that were  like somehow generated wrong, like if you think the stop sign, but it was like the words said stop  but like backwards and not like flipped but like backwards or the vertical everything must go sign  when like some of the lyrics were like upside down or backwards or whatever. Everything just felt so  spooky. Like I think it really really helped the atmosphere and just really helped to establish the  backrooms as this place that is like fundamentally incorrect or like incomprehensible to the normal  mind. The chase scene with Mary and Pirate Clark was so terrifying. It was done so well with her  like running through the different settings in the backrooms. Again, the immersion was so perfect.  I was like my heart was racing. I love the first person shots from Mary's point of view when she's  like looking at Pirate Clark, like when she was like fighting him off and stuff. And I literally  had like no idea if she was going to make it out alive. Honestly, I didn't think she was going  to. Combined with like the never-ending sort of nature of the backrooms with her going through one  room just to find one that makes even less sense.

[00:10:42]It was almost like dizzying. Like when she got to  that one room where she was like on the ledge and it was just a massive like chasm. My friend and I  joked in the theater. We were like, I would just jump. I'm I'm not dealing with this anymore, bro.  And the shot of like the furniture store showroom and you see Pirate Clark just like all the way  in the back and he's just like standing there and like you don't even notice him for a second  and then you see him and it's like you like jump and that like that was horrifying, bro. That was  done so well. I don't really have much in my notes about the characters, but I did find Clark to be  a very complex character, and I would be really interested to know more about his wife and his  relationship with her free divorce, separation, whatever was going on. I feel so bad for Mary  and her arc. She literally all she ever wanted was to help Clark and then she ended up basically  being a prisoner of Async with no way out. The ending scene of her still life just like sitting  motionless in the misremembered interrogation room literally broke my heart because it was barely  even misremembered. Like that's literally just her reality now. I also found that the inclusion  of all of the misremembered things like all of the different settings that were generated that were  reminiscent of places that we'd seen in the movie.

[00:11:55]Bobby and Cats wanted posters, the still lives.  They kept me so on edge. It added so much to the feeling of everything in the backrooms being  our world but just like slightly off. It was like just enough to trigger that uncanny valley  feeling of like it's just familiar enough for us to recognize it but not familiar enough for us  to accept it. And finally, justice for Cat and Bobby because they didn't deserve that. Especially  Cat. She didn't even want to go in the backrooms.

[00:12:24]Free my girl. [music] And now for Obsession. Just  like everybody else on this planet, I am obsessed with Obsession. Obsession is basically about this  20-some-year-old guy named Bear who has a crush on his co-orker named Nikki. And he gets a hold of  this magical object basically called a one-wish Willow that he uses to wish that Nikki would  fall in love with him. And it basically goes wrong because instead of her falling in love with  him, she basically gets possessed with an entity that is obsessed with him. And we follow all the  chaos that ensues. I don't even really know where to start. So, I'm just going to rattle off  some of the things that I personally loved about the movie and like little details that I  noticed that just made me love it even more. So, after Bear made his wish, Nikki was constantly  backlit. Like the light was coming from behind her and her face was in shadow for like most of  her scenes and it was so terrifying. It clues you in almost immediately that this is not Nikki  because Nikki before The Wish had never been portrayed like that. She was always portrayed in  a very soft, amicable, light sort of environment, but then as soon as he made the wish, she was like  shrouded in darkness. Like that was it. Another thing that a lot of people mention is that Sarah  is pretty much always on Bear's left throughout the entire movie, which is foreshadowing at Ian's  party when Bear is supposed to kiss the person to his left and it's Sarah. And then later when  they're in the car and Sarah's like, "I was on your left." She was always on his left. You see  hints of Bear's true character literally from the very beginning. I remember during my first watch  of the movie, I was like shocked and appalled when he went to go get Nikki a new crystal necklace  and then was like, "No, she'd hate this. Let me get her this random $7 toy." Anyway, like that  made no sense. I didn't even know Nikki at that point. We hadn't even seen her. And I was like,  "No, she would love that." Like, if she literally just lost a crystal necklace, what makes you think  she's going to hate a new one? but he put what he found more interesting above what he knew that she  would want. Near the beginning of the movie when our characters are in trivia night and the MC gets  on the mic and he starts talking about their first question which is about Aladdin and he mentions  a movie featuring a blue genie who grants three wishes and like obviously that's about Aladdin  and that's congruent with the sort of ideals in this movie about be careful what you wish for and  that kind of stuff but also there's three wishes that are granted within the span of Obsession.  There's Bear's Wish, there's Ian's wish, and then there's Nikki's wish at the end. So, in this  case, I guess the Willow is basically our genie.

[00:14:50]I've also seen some people make connections about  Bear's name. If you think about it, bears are some of the most vicious predators out there. I mean,  you think about polar bears are one of the only species of animal that actively hunts humans. So,  it's like they're very, very dangerous animals, but they're also constantly like sugarcoated or  like infantilized. It's like I don't know what the word is, but then you think about how they're  always depicted as these like cute happy go-lucky sort of animals like teddy bears, like Winnie  the Pooh, all that kind of stuff. And it's like, no, like these things will kill you if given the  chance. And I think that's really reminiscent of Bear's character as like the nice guy who tries  to portray himself as like this this really sensitive, sweet guy, like just a lover boy, but  deep down he's like literally a predator. Also, I saw somebody joke about like man or bear and  then they're like, "Well, this makes it a lot more difficult." When Nikki does her whole Hansel  and Gretle story in Ian's party, it's so weird and portrays Hansel and Gretle as both lovers and  siblings because Nikki viewed Bear as a brother, as like a little brother kind of figure before he  made the wish. So those are like those conflicting ideals of Bear in her head as somebody that she's  supposed to love so much romantically, but also her real self viewed him as like a brother.  Another thing that I found really, really, really interesting is the ambiguity in Bear's  Wish, right? So I remember the very first time that I heard his wish, I was like, what? There's  so much like semantic ambiguity in that. Everybody knows that when you have a Makea-Wish sort of  theme in a show or a movie, you have to be very specific about your wording. And Bear could not  have been more ambiguous. So basically, without the explic explicative explicative explicative,  the clean version of Bear's Wish was basically just I wish that Nikki Freeman would love me more  than anyone else in the world. Now, there are two very distinct meanings to this wish, and I'm going  to try to describe them both the best I can. So, one could mean that for everybody in Nikki's life,  Bear is wishing that Nikki loves him the most, more than her parents, more than her friends,  more than her siblings, anybody else in her life, that she loves Bear more than anyone else in her  world. Or it could mean that Bear was wishing that Nikki would love him the most out of everybody who  loves him. So, out of everybody in Bear's life, Nikki loved him the most. Now, based on context  clues, we can assume that Bear meant the first one. He wanted Nikki to love him more than she  loved anybody else in her life. But it ended up being the second one that Nikki had to be the  person who loved him more than anybody else could love him. And we saw that because, you know, she  murdered Sarah because Sarah loved Bear truly more than she ever could. So, she had to take her out.  He intended to make himself Nikki's entire world, but because of the ambiguity, it backfired and  it made it so that Nikki had to be his entire world. And that's when he had a problem with it.  And to be completely honest about the ending, I don't think that Bear took the pills  because he wanted to like free Nikki or end her suffering. I think he literally just saw like  the carnage of everybody around him and was like, "I'm out." Like he was like, "I'm not dealing with  this." And just tried to he's a coward, so he took the easy way out. That was pretty clear to me. But  I saw some people saying that he finally did it to like free her and I was like, nah, he's not that  selfless. Now, the largest chunk of my notes is about Bear as a character specifically. I really  don't believe that people are giving his character the nuance and analysis that it deserves.  He's an incredibly complex character. Now, I'm going to preface this by saying he was a  terrible person, okay? He was a villain. He was he was definitely the bad guy. And we came to know  that throughout the movie through the essay scene after the dinner and the what would be so bad  about dating me line. But I feel like especially in the beginning of the movie, people read a  little bit too deeply into Bear's character in the way that the film depicts it. Bear definitely  does just start out as a loser with a crush. Now, we learn through his actions throughout the movie  that he is capable of so much worse than that and that he never truly was just a loser with a crush.  But I think in the beginning that's how it seems, right? We don't really have any reason to suspect  otherwise. Like upon rewatch, I can definitely see it with new eyes knowing what he does later in  the movie. But during my first rewatch, I mean, I had no reason to believe that. That's part of  what makes this character so interesting. It's like seeing him descend into this darkness, but  also knowing that it was in him all along. It's just starting to show more. Some people say that  his wish is inherently selfish and cruel and evil, but I don't think so. I think there's no way that  he actually thought that like a $7 toy that he bought from a random store was actually going to  work. And I don't think that that was like a crazy wish to make. Like I personally have used many a  birthday wish to wish that like the crush that I had at the time would like me back. And I was like  13 at the time. I was not wishing a violent entity would take over their body. I was wishing that  they would have some like change of heart and start to see me for who I truly am and they would  fall hopelessly in love with me. But I wasn't like wishing the worst for them. I was just like  maybe like I just wish that we would align with a reality where things work out. And like I you  know, you don't think that kind of wish is going to work. It's just a Hail Mary. Now, I do think  that Bear knew from the start, like right after he made the wish, I think he knew that it worked  because we see in that initial car scene when Nikki comes back and she's doing the whole Yeah.  I'm sorry. Yeah. Like he literally looks in the back of the car and he looks at the willow and you  can see the gears are turning in his head and he's like, "Was it the wish?" And obviously he's not  going to really think too deeply into that. The average person probably wouldn't think anything  of it. So you could give him the benefit of the doubt about the wish specifically about the wish  working specifically until the diner scene when Nikki starts acting like she starts acting out and  Ian calls him and tells him that Nikki was lying about her dad and that she basically snapped into  a whole other person before she and Bear started dating. And then he knows for a fact that the  wish worked, especially cuz she literally confirms like, "Yes, I love you more than anyone else in  the world." And then from then on, he went along with it. Especially, you know, the scene right  after the dinner, he knew for a fact that that wasn't Nikki and he still went along with it. And  that's disgusting. But honestly, that barely even matters when you know that from the start, he knew  that something was wrong with Nikki. Whether she was on something, whether she was going through  something emotionally, he knew that she wasn't of sound mind. And he still went forward with  things. He took complete advantage of her and her situation, knowing full well that she was not  in any state of mind to consent. And I'm not going to say too too much about the Alex Meyers review  situation because there's already like a million billion reviews on YouTube that you can go watch  about his video specifically, but I did find his review to be very manipulative. I saw his video  before I had actually seen the movie, and the way that he posited the film in his review, it made  his review make total sense for for the most part.

[00:21:57]for some parts. I thought his comments about the  women in the film were disgusting and his humor is really unfunny and I can say that as somebody  who actually used to watch his videos in like high school and stuff like I don't know. I guess  I was his target demographic because I thought it was funny and then as I started to grow up I was  like does this man do anything other than complain and make jokes about women and then I stopped  watching because I started to realize it wasn't funny. All of his jokes are about being an incel  and women and that's it. But I did find that in his analysis of this movie, which I only watched  because I saw a ton of people talking about it on TikTok and I was able to watch it before he took  it down. But some parts of his review of Bear's character specifically did seem to make sense.  I was so confused where all of this like uproar was coming from because it seemed like all of  his points were grounded in the source material again from what he showed in his video. But then  when I watch the actual movie, I saw how much of it he left out to fit his narrative, which is  gross cuz he said the whole like, "Oh, well, at least Bear didn't immediately take advantage of  the situation," which he did, but also literally took advantage of her body in a very graphic,  disturbing scene. Also saying at least he didn't take advantage. That's the bare minimum. Like,  I'm not going to give somebody credit for not taking advantage of somebody. Like, you should  be doing that anyway. And like the minute that he confirmed that the real Nikki wasn't in control  anymore, he just went full out on her, which is like insane. And all of the stuff that he said  about in the beginning how Bear was really just a loser and everybody was saying that he was some  crazy manipulative misogynist. And he was like, "No, he wasn't." Now, that's not what I'm saying  about Bear at all. I'm not saying that he was just a loser. I'm saying that the film depicted him as  a loser, but he had much worse tendencies and much worse desires underneath which were revealed later  in the film. Alex was saying that he was just a loser and that he wasn't this bad guy, but he was  always a bad guy. The film just didn't show us it until later because his character arc, you can't  just put everything out in the beginning. And like, you can't just excuse what a character does  and you can't just diminish their harm because you resonate with them because you're like, "Oh,  we're just losers for real." like you can't do that. Although, one thing that I do hate that I  agree with him on this one teenytiny part of his review is that a lot of people were saying like,  "Oh, well, Bear should have just killed Nikki or he should have just killed himself." Like once he  found out how to end the curse and like Nikki was like, "Please just kill me." Like, "He should  have just killed her." And then Alex was like, "Okay, like it's not that easy." And I hate  that I agree with him on that because yeah, like it's not going to be that easy. Obviously,  the correct thing to do would be, you know, to kill her to end her suffering or whatever,  or to kill himself to end the curse, preferably, you know, to end his own life so that she would be  able to live her own. But that's not easy. Like, randomly coming into the information that the  only way to end your crush's eternal torment is to either take your own life or take hers. That's  a lot to take in. It's crazy to expect him to just like jump at the opportunity and be like, "Well,  this is what I got to do." And then just like go to town. Like that's not like obviously that would  have been the right thing to do, but it's not the realistic thing to do. And obviously I know that  the movie isn't super realistic in terms of you know all like the supernatural elements, but it's  pretty realistic at depicting real human emotions and it's not going to just throw that out the  window for that. And again, Bear is a very selfish character. It wouldn't make sense for him to just  drop everything and do that. And the end part in the bathroom where Bear is trying to figure out  how to take his own life. It's so crazy for so many reasons because when you see that sequence of  him like trying to figure out how to position like the like when he was like putting it here and  then like on his head like everything like it showed that hesitance so well of him knowing that  like I have to do this. But like any human you're not going to like jump at that chance. you're  going to be scared because now he's confronted with like his own death and that's not going to be  an easy pill to swallow for anyone and especially not somebody with narcissistic tendencies like  Bear. And then Alex said this one thing in his review where he was like, why wouldn't Wish Nikki  just end her own life so that Bear wouldn't have to do it for her? Like why isn't her love for him  as strong as you guys are saying his love for her should be? which I literally after I heard that I  had to like pause the video and I was like what is he talking about? Wish Nikki's entire reason for  existence was to love Bear. It was not to make him happy and it was not a true love as we see.  She was literally killing his friends. She wasn't concerned at all with how he felt or was happy  with his surroundings or his circumstance. All that mattered was that she loved him more than  anybody else in the world. So, she's not going to concern herself with what he wants because that  would be a direct contradiction to what her entire reason for being there is. Like, yes, removing  herself from the equation would make Bear happy, but then she wouldn't be there to love him. So,  that goes against her programming. That doesn't make any sense. Also, why are you putting the  blame on Nikki? Like, what? She already has no autonomy to begin with. Both Nikki's, both  the real Nikki and the Wish Nikki, have no autonomy. So, why are you putting expectations  on her to do the work that Bear is supposed to do? That makes no sense. Like, how do you still  manage to victim blame in this situation? Anyway, enough about Alex. I'm sick of talking about him.  My favorite scene in the movie is at the very end after Wish Nikki's wish interrupts Bear's  attempt to throw up the pills that he just took. Some people say that he stopped throwing up  the pills because he wanted to die. so that Nikki would be free because now that he was wished to  love her, that was like his priority. But again, I don't think that's how the Willow would work.  If it's forced love, it's not going to be true selfless love. The wish isn't going to make him  die for her. I think it literally just interrupted his like train of thought and his like actions  and he just kind of like snapped into a different headsp space. But anyway, after he goes out to see  Nikki and then they're both like looking at each other and smiling at each other and then they  approach and they're kissing and stuff and like that sequence was so beautiful to me because they  look so happy and for just a brief moment despite all of the blood and death and gore around them,  everything is peaceful and everything is right between them. And it gives us this like tiny  glimpse into what could have been if Bear had just confessed at the start and they had been  able to pursue a real relationship, an actual love story like Nikki wanted. But he never did and  that's all that's left. [music] So both movies, Backrooms and Obsession, are both incredible  movies in their own regard. They both have such complex, heavily internalized themes. Backrooms  delves into concepts of memory and reality, while Obsession deals with the dangers of control  and unchecked obsession. These movies stick with us for so long, not because these are such novel  or never-before-seen concepts, but because the executions of them are so jarring and unsettling.  Because ultimately, these movies are us. They both manage to reveal things about the inner psyche  through horror which can often be one of the most personalized genres. Backrooms works through  disturbing setting while Obsession works through physical gore and body horror. And all of this  together, you know, the themes, the execution, the medium, the genre. It really just reveals  how horrifying it is to be human. It shows how terrifying our minds can be, and it makes us all  confront our own personal demons. In Backrooms, the setting of the backrooms is meant to  represent this twisted version of Clark's mind. He's an architect at heart, doomed to live  the life of a failed furniture store owner. So, the backrooms are full of wild, nonsensical  patterns like his scattered designs and his scattered mind. The boring, damp yellow  wallpaper and carpet represent this monotonous, neverending spiral of a life after his marriage.  Random furniture pieces are found throughout the backrooms almost as if they're like in the corners  of his mind. Pirate Clark represented his shame, having to humiliate himself to promote whatever  was left of his business. And yet, despite it all, he found comfort in those walls. He found serenity  in that space. He found it easier to sink into those cycles of dread and regret than confront  what had gotten him to that point in the first place or even how dangerous those cycles could be  until it was too late and it literally consumed him. In Obsession, the Willow was so much more  than just like a genie-in-a-bottle type object. It wasn't bringing things to life. It was bringing  things to light. Instead of altering reality, it only made things more apparent. Wish Nikki  represented Bear's repressed desire to control Nikki and possess her rather than love her.  He was forced to face his own mindset when he saw the damage of this control and how little  true love actually played a role. That love can never truly be real if it's involuntary.  Bear never wanted the real Nikki. He wanted a fake version of her to play into this weird  fantasy that he had in his head. And when he got that fake version, it destroyed everything  he loved until ultimately it destroyed him, too.

[00:31:47]These movies are so so so relevant, especially  knowing our society's increasing awareness of things like capitalistic dread and the manosphere.  Clark and Bear represent two very distinct demographics. Clark represents the overworked  pawn, constantly struggling to make ends meet, who turns to unhealthy forms of coping and  ultimately self-destructive tendencies. And Bear represents young men with a warped sense of  love who view women as more objects to be obtained rather than full human beings with autonomy.  Both types of people are so abundant today and both are exceptionally dangerous not only to  the people around them but also to themselves. By presenting these dangers visually, often  in like these bloody or deadly contexts, it forces us all to see just how deeply these  repressed character flaws can run and how much of a threat they can pose when their hosts reach  their breaking point. So hopefully these movies will not just be viewed as entertainment.  Hopefully they can be seen as what they are.

[00:32:50]They're cautionary tales. So hopefully viewers  can recognize these traits in themselves or the people around them and shake them out of it before  it's too late, before they die in a maze of their own mind or die victim to their own obsession. I  hope you guys like those reviews. I had a lot of fun writing them. Honestly, I really want to  do more like movie or show ccentric content in the future because I love watching movies  and I love watching shows and I love analyzing them and immersing myself in their world and in  the minds of the writers and the directors. So, if you want to see more of that, just let  me know. But until then, I love you guys so so so so so so much. I don't think I could live  without you. But I don't have an outro. So bike.