When BACKROOMS came out in May, I was annoyed by the hype. I kept seeing articles about the rise of “liminal horror” which, as far as I could tell, boiled down to people pretending to be afraid of hallways and empty malls. Like so many annoying things it was born on the internet in Youtube videos and “creepypasta,” which is a word not even good enough to use as a placeholder. I object to its common usage, I resent that I had to repeat it, and I assert my rights as an old person to not have to be totally sure I know its definition. Whatever it is I disagree with it, so I was skeptical of this BACKROOMS, to say the least.
But the movie was an undeniable phenomenon. It wasn’t as big as OBSESSION, but a $10 million movie making $401 million is significant, whether or not it’s written and directed by a 20-year-old named Kane Parsons. The word on it was positive from all age groups, and it stars Chiwetel Eijiofor and Renate Reinsve, which kind of makes it a real movie. So, like with OBSESSION, I accepted that it was probly gonna be pretty good, it wasn’t fair for me to pre-judge it, and I let my guard down. Mostly. (read the rest of this shit…)
SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Affeksjonsverdi) is the beginning of my awards season viewing ritual of seeing movies that I know almost nothing about except they’re supposedly good. It’s on all the lists of predicted best picture nominees, but also my friend Matt Lynch told me to see it, so I was planning to.
