Backrooms

Thetakeup: You are now entering the Take Up, place together when the film is over. I'm your host, Joshua Ray, and I'm here with my co-host. That is the managing editor of the takeup.com, Andrew Wyatt, Mr. Andrew Wyatt. Hello.
Andrew: Hello from the United States.
Thetakeup: Hello. We'll explain that here in a second. Every episode though, we do get to decide if one film enters a take up canon. Today we are exploring Kane Parsons' new horror hit backrooms. And then we'll have one more thing. bonjour. Joshua. Umbaguette. Look, I'm over to France. so we we haven't recorded in shit. Five weeks? Last episode was May eighth, and we've both just been through it. wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow. Okay, but we are back together together.
Andrew: A while. Yeah. Yeah.
Thetakeup: Finally, I virtually, yeah, because I decided to move seven thousand miles away. Something like that. I mean Yes, I am seven hours ahead of you. It is currently well, you know what, we shouldn't give too much detail. I don't want people banging down our doors to get on the record with
Andrew: Virtually at least. Yeah. And six time zones is what I've learned. Or five time zones, right? Yeah, you're gonna get doxxed in France.
Thetakeup: but yeah, I moved to France with my husband, so you know.
Andrew: We are now officially an intercontinental, international podcast.
Thetakeup: God, international. my God. Just sweet international. my God, it's crazy. can we do a little bit of catch up before we go to backrooms? Yes, yes. Okay, okay. So let me just tell you. We're we're gonna talk about movie stuff. So I'm gonna I'm gonna start a series on the takeup called the French Dispatch in honor of one of our favorite Wes Andersons.
Andrew: Catch up? Sure. About what?
Thetakeup: and it is literally going to be dispatches from the French cinema. and and one of the reasons they want to do that is it's there are like kind of uncanny similarities. but you know the sk the timing of releases is is very different for some things, different for not. They're just Kind of little nuances that I think Cinephiles would probably be interested in because I think when you think about cinema, at least you know, from like an Anglo perspective, you think of the hubs is like the US and France. mostly because you know, a lot of film culture comes from France. you know, out s at least our kind of film culture, I think, right? but
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: so I've been to, you know, the Latin Quarter where all the Caeda cinema guys were were first watching Nicholas Ray and Hitchcock and doing all their pieces there, the Cinemate Francais and I've I've been here several times before, and of course those were among the first things I was doing. So here are a couple of fun things. I'm actually in a small town called Macon. And Macon is like four hours southwest of Paris. And it is a small town. It reminds me of Springfield, Missouri. But très francae. So French. So French. Like little cobblestone streets with thousand year old houses and things. You know what I'm talking about.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Thetakeup: But the the one movie theater that's here, I did not get to see Disclosure Day when it premiered, which is they have movies that premiere their day is Wednesday, not Fridays. And so I was like, well actually I'm ahead of the curve. No, no, no. Because all that was available to me was dubbed disclosure day.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. French, in French.
Thetakeup: In French. Now, no, find the sacred if you want. Okay. I have seen films in other languages with French subtitles. There is the live translation app on Apple. If you use your AirPods, it will give you a live translation. When I say live, it is about a three-second delay, sometimes more than that. Depends on how long.
Andrew: Whoa.
Thetakeup: Until someone takes a pause in their speech, you know. So I've seen the new Pedro Moldovar, which I will write about. I've seen the new Claire Denis, which is actually in English. I've seen a few other films not in English with a Siri telling me what people are saying. And it's been you know, because subtitles are are like a kind of necessary evil in the world of synophilia, it's like I don't want this thing distracting me from my image. Well, now I've got this additional layer of thing on top of trying to on top of trying to learn French. And one of the ways that I've been learning French before I even moved was turning French subtitles on. Anyway, there's a lot more. I've just been kind of complaining about this and that and also having the great time. I mean, you know, in Paris, there's always a Wong Car Y retrospective. There's always a Brian De Palma series. There's always
Andrew: Another distraction.
Thetakeup: you know, Howard Hawks happening. It's it's like the it's like the place was made for me. I just don't know the language quite yet. Anyway, but I did see backrooms, backrooms not out here in France yet. got another week on that. but I did see it before I I left the States. And I remember you and I we talked about this. You were like, I you were prom what was the video The video essay about Kim Parsons
Andrew: Yeah, well, so we talked about it in a few months ago in the context of a one more thing. And my one more thing was actually a video, not one of Parsons videos, not one of his series, although I did encourage people at the time to go watch his backroom series, was a a v a sort of explainer video slash video essay that started from Parsons videos and used that as a way to talk about other topics.
Thetakeup: Mm-hmm.
Andrew: But yeah, like so we it's it's come up before and I mentioned at the time I think that there was a feature film coming. So this is that film finally.
Thetakeup: Yeah, and this was a like a gotcha josh moment in me pulling up IMDb to look at the cast of backrooms. which we will get into. But can you give us a little background on backrooms? which has a lot of background. so condense as much as you want. We're not, I don't know, we're here.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I but but yeah. So I think one of the things we can get into it, but one of the things that's nice about the feature, I think, is it doesn't require you to have any of this background to understand it's it's an entirely self-contained experience. But if people are
Thetakeup: No, absolutely not. In fact I actually I didn't watch I saw the first backrooms video and that was the only backroom experience I had other than people talking about it. So going into number one, yeah.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Found you're talking about found footage number one, which is his sort of inaugural his inaugural video short. Okay.
Thetakeup: Yes, yes, that was the only context I had.
Andrew: Okay. So we actually need to go back to give a little background. If you're curious about like what the heck did this come from with these kids today and their weird meme images being turned into feature films, it the backrooms phenomenon slightly predates Parsons, Kane Parsons' involvement and his production of his backrooms short films. the idea originally originated in a particular 4chan post about liminal spaces or liminal environments. And somebody had posted a picture of a sort of gross, weird, yellowish, empty room or corridor in what it turned out, I believe, was a hobby store that was in the middle of being renovated, which was the out, you know, the context that nobody knew at the time. But somebody posted it and it sort of lit a fire under the 4chan creepypasta no sleep community, who pivoted off of that and started like developing a mythology around it. And it it got kind of crazy as the kids are wont to do nowadays. They kind of like took it and ran with it. And there's entire Wikipedias about the the quote unquote levels of the backrooms as this kind of like weird otherworldly extra dimensional space that's adjacent to our reality. Independent of that, Kane Parsons, this in this young internet YouTube content creator, started making short films and he has a few different series, but the one that sort of took off was him taking this single image and creating a sort of computer generated faux analog found footage film about this extra-dimensional space and turning it into a little neat little I think I think maybe like six minute horror short. He then continued to expand on it and develop a whole series. I think there's like 40 plus videos now in the backrooms playlist, various sh short films about that, some of which are true found footage, like Guy holding a camcorder, running through hallways, being chased, type of stuff. Familiar things that we've seen in horror idioms in the last 20, 30 years. But also like little snippets of corporate promotional videos and instructional videos and what seems to be surveillance footage of random things. He's training videos. Yeah, he's really good at
Thetakeup: Training videos, presentations, and then things that exist things that are not necess that exist outside of like found material. things that are also like kind of fiction versions of of workers in this this company that in this film is a what did what did they do? What what was their MRI machine?
Andrew: Mm-hmm. They started out, I think they Mark Mark DuPulas' character says they started out as an MRI company. So I I don't want to dive too deep into the lore because I don't think the lore is actually that important to what the film is what this particular feature film is doing. But I do think it's interesting that if you were a lost head back in the days and were really like into the extra textual stuff about the Dharma initiative and so forth, I think this what Parsons is doing in br
Thetakeup: Right. Yeah.
Andrew: slowly braiding in these this background information about exactly what's going on in this mega corporation that's been studying the backrooms. I think if you if you were that type of person who was into that back in the 2000s, you'll probably also be interested in it in backrooms. So if you haven't seen Parsons films, I do think it's worthwhile to at least, as Josh says, maybe to take a look at Found Footage Number One, which is his his film I think from 2022 that sort of started it And like Sample it and see if it's your thing. If it's not your thing, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think you can also still sort of watch the film as a standalone object. But for people, it's it hits that nice place between being satisfying, I I think people who are fans of his work, short f short format work on YouTube, and people who are completely going in blind. I think it hits both audiences effectively, which is a hard it's a hard s circle to square, I think. and I think this film does that successfully.
Thetakeup: It it is, but don't you think that if you found the film backrooms an interesting experience that kind of dipping your toe into Parsons' earlier videos, I I like the one thing definitely led to another. Those videos feel like a training ground for his teacher film, and not in a way that, like you said, he's sort of bringing in The the established lore. Of course, it's the same company. It's the same sort of design, of course, with a budget upgrade here. but I found going back and watching those backrooms videos to be an a really interesting. I know an entire like cult was built around these things. However, for someone who's more interested in like feature filmmaking, it was just interesting to think about the relationship between
Andrew: Yeah.
Thetakeup: The way people are consuming these backroom videos versus the way they might consume this film backrooms and whether or not they're kind of having this, you know, tenuous linkage. And I call it tenuous because, like you said, you don't necessarily need that. I think you can go into this independently. And I think actually you might be at a better advantage because you're not trying to compare. You know, I s I saw it with a friend who is a fan of the
Andrew: Or wedge or wedge your preexisting like headcanons. For those people who are deeply into fandoms fandoms, there's always a tendency to like wedge your particular headcanon and favorite theories into an object when it when it appears. So like the fact that we've now expanded to this feature film, much bigger budget, much less reliance on CG. It's worth pointing out that Parsons is sort of foremost the CG animator because so many of the early backroom shorts are done entirely in in computer graphics.
Thetakeup: Yeah.
Andrew: when he uses he does use some human actors here and there, but even then there are shots in the his shorts that were that are deceptive where you would assume that that's gotta be a real person and nope, that's a computer generated person walking around a computer generated environment. So he's sort of first foremost a computer animator in more than anything else, I think.
Thetakeup: I mean they're really Yeah. You're really smart in using that VHS filter to hide some of the seams. And it's but it's also, you know, the seams are there. They're they're sometimes very obvious, other times it's really incredible work, what this one person was doing. And he had a team of people that he would work with too, but really what this one person was doing on their own. And you know.
Andrew: Yes.
Thetakeup: a lot of the conversation right now about backroom disobsession, martipliers film Iron Long. I you know, I think a few episodes ago I said I would smash the YouTube to future film pipeline. This one I would keep. I like this one quite a bit. I like I like backrooms. not only because I I have an interest in like
Andrew: Well and I I
Thetakeup: Th there's something so compelling about the concept itself, that I think the in the way it's deployed here is is in the most interesting way. Like the least interesting thing they could have done is adapt Kane Parsons' earlier videos. And so it was really interesting to go back into those and and see that it was this kind of like very internet-y, very internet sleuthy, like.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: you know, giving your red string out to connect things and and that really kind of it disinterests me in one way and interests me in another way. But this is a this is a proper film, which I can't say about some of the other YouTube to horror indie horror pipeline films.
Andrew: Yeah, I I think it's I think it's more important to recognize when something good comes out of that pipeline than dis than to make generalizations about the pipeline itself and say, you know, inner the YouTube the YouTube generation doesn't know anything about filmmaking. I think it's or or saying that it's all great and then it's all golden. I think we have to approach it like anything else. That people who come from whatever creative background go get to make a feature film. We judge that. product on its own merits and don't but I do think it's interesting what you're saying about like how people, particularly younger people, are consuming things. I've been thinking about watching and thinking about Amazing Dis Digital Circus lately, which has become this humongous internet phenomenon distributed on YouTube, but now has a its final episode in theaters and people are flocking to see it in theaters. So there's like weird crossover between YouTube YouTube consumption and theatrical feature film consumption that sort of unprecedented. but yeah, so do we want to talk about so I don't want to get too bogged down by talking about the lore or the background or the content of Parsons YouTube videos, but I do want to talk about some of the influences on it. I think I mentioned when we did that, I did that one more thing a few months ago. I mentioned the importance of Mark Danieluski's House of Leaves on Parsons' sensibility and the type of horror he's interested in. I think that Library of Babel, Jorge Borges short story, I think is an important one as well. But the idea of labyrinths and the idea of spaces, recursive spaces that keep going and going and expanding and expanding on forever, I think is such a seductive concept. It's so hard. It really works in the literary form, and I'm not sure how it's ever really worked that well in visual media. but I think maybe Backrooms is getting closer getting closer to it than any other thing I've seen before.
Thetakeup: Well, I think there are a I think they found a really great kind of image to solve that. but I think we have works that are very close to what this is, and they and they might the answer might surprise you in that it's very clear a few things that are going on here influences like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. the kind of
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: you know, space where history kind of folds in on itself and the space itself becomes a manifestation of some sort of trauma. Andre Tarkovsky's Solaris was a hallmark for me, too. Kind of like Hall of Mirrors of history. Alain René, last year, well, a lot of his work in the way time is sort of the slippery, elusive thing. but
Andrew: Ooh, good c yeah, good comp good cop, yeah.
Thetakeup: In particular, I was thinking about Mary and Bad, last year at Mary and Bad and and the way that film does, you know, some of the same things I just mentioned. there's also
Andrew: Mm-hmm. I I like the shine I like the shining comp, but I think I think the distinguishing feat what distinguishes backrooms from something like what I would call the neo-gothic sensibility of Stephen King, that Kubrick, as much as King hated Kubrick's film, I think it it the Shining film does do a really good job of capturing it, some of that neo-Gothic sensibility. The idea of the the host the inherent hostility of the supernatural or occult forces. That reside there, the way that, you know, that there's like negative emotions, negative energy that's feeding into this place and creating this sinkhole of evil. You know, it's a very occult horror phenomenon. And while, and we can get into it, but I think one of the really intriguing things about the backroom is how it sort of teases that possibility, but also reposts it in a way that pushes back against the idea that there is any morality here, that there's any human. interaction that means anything that there's a there's a cosmic horror aspect of this which I think transcends Gothicism in in the backrooms, which I really appreciated. And I again I think it's a hard it's a hard needle to thread and I think this film does it really well.
Thetakeup: Well, let's get into what this film is, because if anything, you know, what you're talking about is the way this kind of like self-pathologizing space, like the w the way a person reflects and is refracted through it, is kind of a I'm sure there will be sequels that explain this to death, the way
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: you know, I don't know, Hellraiser is is explained or I dun you know, the way sequels love to overexplain things, but well, can we kind of break down what exactly this this film is about? Because I think w is as it relates to what you're saying about this kind of self pathologizing. liminal space where, you know, your memories collapse on themselves or maybe they make manifest into uncontrollable kind of forces. you know, this kind of labyrinth of of memory and and trauma is it's very different from what it is in Kane Parsons' videos. at least the kind of sampling that I've done in them. And I'm sure there will be
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: Because this film is so incredibly profitable, there will be a whole slew of backrooms films that will inevitably explain the the the lore or the mechanism. I would like to see yeah, you're going in the same direction. Don't you want to see like what they're doing with Evil Dead? Like backrooms, backrooms basement series, backrooms like backrooms.
Andrew: Maybe I Yeah.
Thetakeup: Christmas holiday special. Like I just I just w
Andrew: That's what Parsons has said that he is not interested in explaining anything, but he is interested in returning to this well in an anthology style, of not of using the the backrooms as a mechanism to tell other stories that he's interested in, not not in bringing back these specific characters.
Thetakeup: Well And yeah, but John Carpenter also didn't know or think that Lori and Michael were related. So I mean you know, c commerce is commerce. But I just love I I I chiefly love that this film is about two people. And that's really what it's about. It's just two different people.
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Two different people and they're they're they're contrasting response. Two different people who have can very highly contrasted responses to their the discovery of the backrooms. So we sort of begin with this character Clark, played by Chaiwatilla Giafor. a great sort of like burnout performance from him, where he's playing a guy who's kind of a mess.
Thetakeup: you you you get to explain because I saw it three. Yes, exactly. Mm.
Andrew: Right when the film opens, you know, divorced owner slash manager of failing furniture store. We're set in the early nineties, I believe. and Clark is not doing great. He's in his his story is sort of on its last legs. He's l sleeping in the store. And there's a great sequence where he's like in a bed showroom area with like a table, layup, and nightstand. And for a second we don't really know where he is. And we get that sort of wider shot. We realize he's in the middle of his own furniture showroom sleeping.
Thetakeup: And it's kinda wild because you know, if this film doesn't get some sort of either special effect and or pr production design, recognition at the end let's let's keep that in the backs backs of our minds, okay? To really push back round the best we can. because I think it's just so it's so you
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: You already know what it is. Like seeing that image, anyone who like you and me grew up in particular the Midwest in the 80s and 90s, 2000s, we know what these spaces are, these kind of like overdevelopments where you end up with these just like complete wastes of land.
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: That are made into these commercial spaces that are unoccupied and therefore have a kind of a allow you to sort of project whatever you want into them. They become this kind of like commercial abyss. And and even his store is like it the entire space swallows up the little inventory that this man has.
Andrew: Well Yeah, there's two things going on. I mean Yeah, I was gonna say part of the the film takes place in California, I think, but it's that's largely incidental to what it's doing. And there's something really genius about the very specific balance of empty space to objects in that store that s without before you even enter that the supernatural or or sci-fi space of the backrooms themselves, we're already on edge because of just how there's something off about it. And that's what I think Parsons has a really good. appears to have a really good instinct for. It's like people throw around the phrase liminal space and liminal horror and liminal what what makes something unsettling by being liminal. And Parsons, I think, has a really he seems to exhibit a very intuitive grasp for like, let's fit let's buy this have this cavernous furniture showroom space and fill it just slightly not enough to make it feel a little bit off. And the way that a furniture showroom is already kind of a s weird liminal space because it's a a facsimile of a home, right? It's a it's a space that isn't a home and it's filled with pseudo home like touches. The way that that base that basement addition, the weird basement addition, feels like it could be somebody's like actual basement or rec room.
Thetakeup: And then it my god. I mean, how many, you know, like kind of shitty furniture stores have you been in that have that fucking basement? I know that space. I'm actually so surprised that this to and of course he's working with a team of people and this film, while he has directing credit, he's got co-writing credit with Will Sudek, who's of he's mostly known for TV for homeland and Westworld. but the just the idea of like going down to the basement and we have more furniture down there. It's just like the setup is so awful.
Andrew: I can't tell you how many how many like vintage furniture like not even crappy strip mall ones, like nice vintage vintage furniture stores always have the basement room, right?
Thetakeup: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like of course we have too much
Andrew: But to get to get back to the plot, so Clark discovers almost accidentally that there is this s doorway or portal in his the basement to his showroom. And it leads to this place. And to describe it with the word place implying something singular, it almost feels like a misnomer. Because it's really like a parallel reality or a dimension or universe that's slightly aside, or you know, to use the parlance, the stranger thing parlance, it's the upside-down backwards version of our reality. It's but it's not a one-to-one mirror, it's not sort of a shadow of our world. It's the the the analogies that the film uses are so great and so they're hard to improve on. It's the drawing of a dog based only on a description from somebody who's never seen a dog before. And That idea that this is a
Thetakeup: Yeah, that's such a great kind of line. Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah. The idea that this place is sort of it exists on its own, like it wasn't created by somebody. It seems like it's some sort of natural phenomenon adjacent to or sideways from our reality. And it has its own rules that it's not even necessarily following strictly. but at any rate, Clark gets sort of obsessed with this, of course. His his life isn't doing great to begin with, and the discovery of something so uncanny sort of electrifies him. And he tells his therapist, played by I'm gonna mispronounce her her lovely Norwegian name here. Give me a help, give me some help here. Renate Rensva? Is that it? Rensva, okay. Rensva, okay. his therapist
Thetakeup: Renata Rinfa. Renata Renata Rincefa. Yeah. recent Academy Award anatomy for sentimental value.
Andrew: Yeah, and those of us who have followed her for the past few years, you know, it's it's it's kind of cool to see her in a in a big Hollywood film, but but like a also kind of a cool squasi-indie horror film. It it's it's interesting. But she plays his therapist and is kind of sort of taken aback, and of course she doesn't really he starts to describe what he's found in the basement to his store and she doesn't quite believe him, which leads to sort of the the big sort of act break, which is that Clark vanishes. And she eventually gets curious enough to go to his store and start poking around, and then she herself ends up wandering the backrooms and discovering to her horror that something bad, really bad, has happened to Clark there.
Thetakeup: Well and and It's not unprompted, too, because he sends through some kind of like transmission because he knows he's going in. He leaves her a message, and it's it's odd, and she's kind of going off of him telling her about these back rooms, as they were. So but I want to back up just a second. The first time he goes in, this is something the internet is losing their fucking minds about.
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. What?
Thetakeup: He finds a stack of unused furniture and kind of like like a burning pyre, like or something like that. Like they it looks like that. And he he goes back in
Andrew: It's it's a jumble of it's a jumble of like furniture that's seems similar to the furniture from his own store.
Thetakeup: Yes, exactly. He leaves, but then he goes back and takes a stool. And this seems to be confounding millions of people, millions of people on the internet.
Andrew: Really? Why?
Thetakeup: It that is okay. I'm glad that it's not confusing to you. I mean, what like I need a totem or like a a souvenir to to know that this fucking happened to me? Like, right? Am I misreading that? Is there can do I have confusion about this?
Andrew: Yeah, I think it's completely No, no, I think it's completely pragmatic, actually. I don't even think it's symbolic. I think it's just it it's the to prove that I'm not having a gigantic hallucination, I need to make sure that I bring back a physical physical signifier. Yeah.
Thetakeup: Why can't we just go object? Okay, okay. Well I'm glad we solved the internet's great mystery.
Andrew: That i I mean, this just like internet particularly like movies that are sort of afflamed the popular imagination for that week. Internet discourse is always so baffling to me. Like the things that people choose to get hung up on versus the things that I'm interested in talking about are are always there's always a seems like a there's a big gulf between those two things.
Thetakeup: So there are a couple of different filmmaking modes. the film does have a cold open, which is very similar to one of the training videos or found footage videos that Parsons did. And I think it's it's it's really kind of clever in that he knows that people are expecting the film to be like this. And so let me give the people what they want initially. and then we get this kind of proper you know,
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: film narrative around that. And but what we we do end up with Clark and his part time help. Clark and his employees, two two of them, they're a couple, they're young, hot people. There is a film footage section that I found incredibly unsettling. because I didn't really know that there would be like a quote unquote monster in this thing. And so you really don't get what it is until the end of the film. the when
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Thetakeup: You know, and it's kind of like the parsing out of just how kind of twisted the backrooms can be throughout the film, I think is ingenious and that you're not kind of immediately presented with you know just how fucked up this can get. It's that this film i it it it has a really kind of leisurely pace to it, but Somewhat no, leisurely is not the right word. And and one of the other kind of discoursy bits is that this film people are particularly fans of the original backrooms videos are disappointed with the kind of I think they called it a two-hour-long therapy session. And I think it's so interesting that actually this thing was made into a human story. and probably the other half of that is that the pacing is very different. From what people are expecting of even you know, the most kind of indie horror that's available out there on the big screens right now. It is a very judiciously paced film. Does that make sense? There's a
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there's a lot of sort of there's a it takes its time initially to actually get to the strangeness, which I a lot other than that cold open, it takes a while to get there. There's there's the really excellent use of the voiceover, both Clark's voiceover and the therapist's voiceover, from her like self help tapes. inserted, not sort of sometimes used diegetically and sometimes sort of overlaid with other scenes.
Thetakeup: Yeah.
Andrew: To create additional contrast or context. It's it's very smart filmmaking, which is not necessarily what you expect from this isn't and it's not a patch on any of Parsons' short films, which I think are great, but it just feels like a level up in a different a surprisingly in a good way, degree of confidence in using the media the larger canvas of feature filmmaking in smart ways.
Thetakeup: It's it's an entirely different medium. And I think when we talk about his original videos and the kind of like, you know, the the internet nature of them being non narrative in the way that you can sort of dip your toe into video twenty versus video two. I think number nine was my favorite one. No, it's found footage number two is my favorite one. Yeah. That is some real freaky shit in that one. anyway.
Andrew: Yeah, that that's a good one. That's got some freaky stuff in it, yeah.
Thetakeup: but this is a narrative film, and I think the you know, the the him and Will Sidduck have found a really great way of making this interesting, you know, because I think we could have gotten something like Iron Lung, which was Markiplier's like you know, two-hour vanity project. And they're just different people. And so, you know, what she said earlier is about it being unfair to talk about is very true. because I think there's just a lot of talent here and this kind of like new horror monster that they've created in the backrooms. I think I like to think of it the space as the kind of villain of the film, the Freddie or the Jason because think about
Andrew: Except it's not really a villain. I mean I this is I think
Thetakeup: But but here's here right. It here's what's interesting about it is that it it it doesn't have any kind of innate evil or good or anything. It just is and it just kind of like the person manifests in the thing, right? But it's scary as fuck. But it's also you want to get in there.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Thetakeup: You want to spend time. You want to see it. You want to spend time in it. You want to see what the possibilities are. I in a film. Let me say in a film, if if I approach the back room, I mean I've been in a few different kinds, but
Andrew: Do you? Yeah. I'm just saying, if my hand goes through a wall, I am backing away and never getting as far away from that wall as possible. I'm definitely not going through it. But there is something about Clark being in the place he's in and feeling like he can project some answers or some meaning in his life onto this space, which I would argue isn't a villainous it it has no morality. It has no it there is a cosmic aspect to it. It's just a thing, it's a phenomenon in the same way that, you know, lightning or
Thetakeup: yeah, yeah.
Andrew: Aurora Borealis is a phenomenon. It's a thing, it's an aspect. It's hasn't yet been completely scientifically studied or mapped, but I get the impression it seems to be a natural phenomenon that exists adjacent to our reality. And Clark, the fact that Clark's instinct is to go in there and start mapping it and start trying to div derive some kind of meaning or sense for it, it gives him a meaning in a sense that he didn't have previously. I think is the insidious aspect of it, right? That the the individuals, it's not even that the that the backrooms reflect and refracts, it's that the individual brings their baggage with them and and it's telling, I think, that you know, there's that, not to jump too far ahead, but there's that sort of like therapy session at knife point, as our producer Ethan c described it. Yeah.
Thetakeup: Let's talk about it. I think we're there. Yeah, let's talk about it. It's probably the most dialogue heavy scene of the film and it is it does recall to me another cinematic hallmark in David Lynch. in particular the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks. You know, I I yeah
Andrew: Mm-hmm. I was also thinking about that horrifying non Black Lodge family dinner scene from Fire Walk with me. Yeah.
Thetakeup: Absolutely. Also the dinner in Eraserhead. I I was thinking about, you know, the and you want to talk about what the OG backrooms is, is the fucking house that Patricia Arquette and Bill Tolman live in in LA. Like, what is that place? Dorothy Vallon's hallway? Like, so so yeah, we there's
Andrew: Right. Somebody map that place out for me on a paper. man, I'm glad you said eraser heads because I couldn't quite put my finger on what that the whole thing with the edible people. Chickens, but they're new, right? my god, I'm glad you said that.
Thetakeup: Yeah. Yeah. but but they're also like they're made of mashed potatoes. Like open button mash.
Andrew: Or cotton candy or asbestos, or I'm not sure what they're made of. But that seems to be a new addition that Parsons is adding to the mythology because while we've seen entities, we've seen things moving around, sort of shaken shaky cams at the periphery of the backrooms in his videos, we haven't seen these people, these like copies of copies of copies of human beings that that the film presents to us.
Thetakeup: Yeah, yeah. They're made of dreams and trauma. Yeah, and they're geometrically like sliced and diced and put back together and have like yeah, like you said, sort of like echoes of itself within its face or you know, to the final shot where Renata Rensva, either her or a version of her seems to have gone through the copy machine, folded
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: but they're really just kind of uncanny versions of things.
Andrew: Well, it's I mean, the the important point I think is that there is an an idiomatic langu a visual idiomatic language that's borrowed from computer graphics and video gaming. And I mean that's central to the entire concept. The original viral image of the backrooms before Parson was even involved was about the idea of noclipping through the reality through our reality and into this adjacent reality or below reality. And the the entire so the entire idea of noclip and the idea of graphical.
Thetakeup: Yeah. Yeah. You wanna you wanna you wanna go back a second and tell us what no clipping is? Yes. You have to explain it to fucking me because my friend also said that to me and I was like, I understand, like as someone who has been in front of a computer screen for most of my life, I understand what you mean, but what what do you mean?
Andrew: Do we have to explain it to to our older audience? Well, you so the idea is that if you're wandering around in a video game environment, there are eventually there are barriers, whether it's a floor, a wall, a ceiling, an object, right? So even in the most primitive early three-dimensional video games, like say Doom, right? You're wandering around a hallway and when you press up against a wall, virtually speaking, you can't move through it. It blocks you, right? That that clipping phenomenon, the idea that there's a barrier there that's preventing you from proceeding through that. So a clipping would be the the prevention of you being able to move through a solid surface in a virtual environment. No clip would mean that you'd somehow, through errors or programming glitches or whatever, you manage to push through that barrier. And it usually ends up like breaking your game and putting you in a place where you shouldn't be. And that's like the entire nut of the backrooms, the idea that this place should not be accessible to us in our reality, but through quote unquote glitches or errors, we've managed to push our way through it through whether through singular events or as in the feature for backrooms feature film, we have this sort of permanent free standing portal in the basement of Clark's store. So the the idea and where I was going with this was the idea that the way that the people in the backrooms and also the obviously some objects that are sort of repeated and strange, repeated and iterated in strange ways, that's also reminiscent
Thetakeup: More no clipped into the ground, like Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah, at weird angles. Yeah. So that all of that is reminiscent of what what I would think of as like video game lore, as video game visual idioms presented inside a sort of science fiction context.
Thetakeup: Also the video game portals is a huge hallmark. yeah.
Andrew: Right, right. So I mean, like, these are things that I think anybody under my age or younger intuitively understands because we've grown up with these cultural phenomena. But I think the other thing is I think just the idea of seeing like backward stop signs embedded in floors where they shouldn't be is unnerving to even people who have no experience with virtual worlds or digital gaming. Like there's something unsettling about the I the entire concept of A copy of a copy that's somehow imperfect and i it glitches out and tries to repeat things and doesn't quite capture the essence of the original in some way. But
Thetakeup: Well, that's why the that surreality can be frightening. it's because then the normal thing set askew can can always be unsettling to us at a at at kind of epistemological level, right? It's like that that that I know should not be.
Andrew: Right. Right. Shouldn't exist. But let's take it back to that pivotal scene at the dinner table where you don't love it?
Thetakeup: I don't love that scene. I d I I I don't love it. I like the idea of it. The kind here's what I love. I love Renata Rensva's performance in it. I love her kind of rejoinder to his argument. and her like being his therapist saying, Hey, maybe you're just shitty in a way is is it's just that the scene itself is is Pretty long and has like to whereas the rest of the film feels like it's very naturally arriving on some fantastic dread and horror. that feels a little kind of like tweaked to me in a way, like it it's showing the maker's hand in a way that I think is it works against the ideas of backrooms.
Andrew: Hmm. That's fair. I do think it's it's funny how like she blows up at him and basically drops her supportive therapist mask completely, which is not beating the allegations that we all think our therapists really just want to tell us to shut the fuck up and yeah. Yeah.
Thetakeup: hate us. I know they hate us. They they can't stand us. They don't know why they're helping us. They just love the insurance for never beating.
Andrew: Never never beating the allegations. That yeah, I I guess I get what you're saying. I sort of like the so much of this movie is about silence and the long, the long sort of quiet exploration, unnerving exploration of these spaces to drop sort of a historonic melodramatic family dinner scene by way of a Lynchian nightmare into the film, I think makes for a nice little change of pace.
Thetakeup: Mm-hmm. Sorry. So the scene I was actually thinking about, and I know you had to been thinking about it too, was the Sawyers family dinner at the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah, absolutely. And except this version of Leatherface is Andrew, describe the
Andrew: Mm-hmm. yeah yeah yeah yeah okay. Let me tell you, let me tell you. I I said I said somebody was wanting to know, like, what is the monster? Like, there's gotta be a monster. What does the monster look like? They they asked me point blank, and I'm like, what is it? Like, I'm okay for hearing spoilers. I'm like, you would never guess in a million fucking years what the monster in the back rooms looks like in this particular story looks like. Like I would you could get a hundred guesses and you would never guess what it looks like.
Thetakeup: But it's the kind of film that they wanted to make and the kind of film that I really responded to. The answer to that being the cardboard cutout of Clark as or the, you know, the character he likes to play in the commercials where he's a You're a pirate? You're a pirate, but this is also the Ottoman Empire? Never mind. Like, I love that. Also.
Andrew: Yeah. Pirate or assault?
Thetakeup: There's something in there probably about Ottoman Empire and and like the stretch of a thousand years or something. I don't I don't know. Or maybe it was just a cute pun. but yeah, the I think the monster is just a really kind of great idea getting at what this how this backrooms functions as a kind of memory palace. It's like it's the most anti-Prustian memory palace. I like it.
Andrew: The analogy the analogy I would use is that like, do you know do you in the old days of computers, did you ever like defrag your hard drive? Okay. Bec because like to to simplify it. So like I feel like the backrooms is like reality that hasn't been defragged in a hundred thousand years. Like it's just errors on top of errors on top of rep like old data that's been kept way too long and repeated. But the fact I think what's interesting about the
Thetakeup: yeah. yeah. Yeah.
Andrew: Discourse about this film is so many people are getting sidetracked by that entity, that that pirate giant demi-Clarkian entity that's lumbering around, and thinking that that is somehow like the master villain of the story. And it just it's which to me, which to me just is a is a wild misreading of what the film's doing, how how the film presents it, right? The the idea that Clark
Thetakeup: Huh, interesting.
Andrew: Very stupidly, I mean, and they make a point that Clark very stupidly thinks that this creature is somehow copacetic with him and like talks to it as an equal and and suffers a terrible fate because of that, because he's not treating this lumbering thing as a dangerous monster as he should be. Like that it seems the film seems pretty clear about what's going on there, right?
Thetakeup: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. at least it's pretty clear to me to someone who has doubts of self loathing, I understand what's going on there. you know, I'm generally okay folks. You know. Don't worry about me. yeah, I'm okay.
Andrew: You're okay. Does make you think about what your evil copy. But there is something interesting about how Clark's Clark's copy in the back rooms is much more active. That the and the other people or creatures that he encounters are sort of just passive. Like they he makes a point of showing that they don't even really respond to pain. They don't really move ex when you prompt them. They do get that one lady just gets up and runs around screaming when the pirate shows up pointedly.
Thetakeup: Well, it's becoming territorial too, the way Clark is kind of mastering the backrooms or attempting to master the backrooms is it yeah, it seems to be playing into that. But I have to say, that, you know, the stretch where Clark first enters the backrooms, which has to be twenty minutes or more of this film, where it's mostly dialogue free, it's got this great kind of
Andrew: But but Clarks Right. Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: droney electronic score to the film. And that to me is just such a kind of masterful stretch of filmmaking. There's one other piece of production design that when I saw it, I fell through the fucking floor into a back room because the banisterless stairs that are in the middle of
Andrew: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: What looks to be a high rise level of backrooms that are completely open. Renata Rensva is the atrium with the the stairs that lead up to some sort of portal, her only kind of escape. That felt like a violation that someone was inside my dreams. that image of
Andrew: Mm-hmm. The atri the atrium I would call it. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: you know, the staircase up to the sea it really just sent like shivers down my spine. It's like, you know, someone not you know, you're not very unique, Josh. Everyone's having nightmares about this kind of
Andrew: Well, an ad add being pursued by something, whatever it is, like this, the sense of of of a murderous entity pursuing you through this nightmarish geometry nightmare. I think is a very it's not uncommon, but I think the film is so evocative about how it presents it. is what really makes it succeed. The fact that she goes up the stairs, the like you say, the railing of the stairs.
Thetakeup: Yeah. Well
Andrew: But it's not a vertical door, it's a horizontal door, like a trap door.
Thetakeup: my god. You know, if there were a phone in this where people couldn't dial the number correctly, no matter what they did, it it would I would it would be the scariest film ever made.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. I would be I would be packing for a trip and not being able to pack in time to make my plane. Done and done.
Thetakeup: my god, well I done that in reality. Done and done. All right. I know there's probably a lot of kind of odds and ends and things that we wanna talk about and talking about background.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Well, how do you how do you feel about the coda? once she gets once the therapist gets out of the backrooms, she sort of winds up in this facility controlled by the company, the sort of the evil corporation at the heart of Parsons lore is this company called Async. And she sort of ends up and Mark Duplas appears briefly and sort of talks at her and basically debriefs her a little bit. kind of plays the fen the friendly character the friendly face of the evil corporation sort of thing.
Thetakeup: I mean You know, I'm not necessarily a creative person. I'm one who judges creative people. this is it i the way that it plays, I think, is great. The w what it actually is is probably felt necessary to some people. I would like to see this a a backrooms film that does play like an a Long Renee film or or something even that pushes the boundary of narrative film and
Andrew: Yeah.
Thetakeup: particular time and space, the things that I'm very interested in film. it does k reach toward a kind of explanation-ish, but I think it's it really rides a line between the two things that I'm talking about here is making something that is kind of alienating, but also something that I think, you know, gives a kind of as neat a resolution as possible. I think it is here.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And and as you say, the transition to feature film, if we're going to tell a hundred and ten minute true narrative driven story rather than just I mean, that we we you would mention this earlier. There is a version of this when Parsons made this into a feature film where it played a little bit more like the zombie movie Wreck or something, where it's just two hours of found footage chaos like one take found footage chaos roaming around the backrooms. Like there is a version of that that could be that. And this isn't that at all. It uses found footage selectively, but
Thetakeup: Gotta tell ya. If you say found footage to me, I say pass. The it's it's never gotten better since the Blair Mitch project. It has never worked. Even in this, I'm still playing the what is the concept hitchcock called the the the the I'm even in this, I'm still playing the plausible and that.
Andrew: You're not interested in it. Yeah, like why don't you put the camera down thing?
Thetakeup: Drop the fucking camera. Get out of the back rooms. I yeah, it it just it does it kind of never make sense. So I was relieved when the cold open sort of cut where like it did make sense why they would be recording what happened in the way that that's deployed there. cut to this yeah.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. It's research. I mean that cold open is basically research. And what Clark is doing is also research of a kind for his own twisted purposes.
Thetakeup: Of research. It does get to a point where, you know, you kn his employees when they're kind of reaching their ends, it's like, okay, cut the cameras, cut the cameras. but
Andrew: Mm-hmm. I I'm not I'm not as I'm not as hostile to the form, although I think I can count on maybe one hand where I feel like the really truly great exemplars of it in the last twenty five years are probably very few and far between, but I'm not opposed to it as a form, I guess.
Thetakeup: Yeah, no, I am. And yeah.
Andrew: But but to get back to like the the that coda, I do think it gives just enough to provide some sense of this wasn't a completely like deranged, abstracted dream world, that there is some kind of framework here that at least this one company is trying to understand. But of course, the company seems to be somewhat responsible for not the creation of the backrooms, but the increase. If you go if you do a little bit of a deep dive into the lore in Parsons YouTube series, it implies that async's exploration of the pace of the backrooms has accelerated the amount of connections that have started to appear between the backrooms and our reality. So there is a little bit of backstory that still remains hidden. And I think fundamentally, what that coda conveys is that while, okay, we have a company and we have a we have a name for a company and we have some real human beings, some real scientists who are actually studying it. And have sort of a framework that they're trying to establish, but it still doesn't answer sort of the essentialist questions like where the fuck did this place come from? What the fuck is its purpose? What what are the rules by which it operates? All that remains completely, and I think appropriately off-screen because it it's part of the idea of something unanswerable. It's it's something, I mean, not to put too fine on a point on it, but it's It stands in for all the mysteries of the universe that we're never really going to be able to untangle.
Thetakeup: And this is not the film for it, and that this is a film that is about the kind of the way you process your memories and what you allow those memories to be. so i I mean, there's probably a great sort of like corporate satire. I I mean, Parsons has kind of already done that. if you've seen that's what I'm talking about.
Andrew: No. Mm-hmm. Right. There's some great instructional videos and like introductory HR videos and shit in his collection.
Thetakeup: I like this sales video where it shows the possibilities of developing the back rooms. Like, no, you're right. You're right. Like
Andrew: Right. For though for those of you who haven't seen Parsons films, it's worth pointing out that Async's idea, money making billion dollar idea here is that they're going to use the backrooms as unlimited extra dimensional storage space. And it starts out as we'll put you know the things, things that are warehoused in there for easy access and inventory, but then it starts to quickly expand into like we're gonna build cities and let people live in the backrooms. Yeah. Just terri absolutely terrifying like capitalist bullshit.
Thetakeup: And and and And can you imagine travel, the way you'll be able to import and export objects when you can just go through a portal? my god, no, you're so right. You're so right. All right, okay. So film's a big hit. I think it'll be it you know, it's difficult to call these things, but in in that the ideas of liminal spaces have been hugely influential on the internet. I can see this film
Andrew: Yeah, my god.
Thetakeup: Bringing these ideas to the masses and in the particular way that it's telling this story to be hugely influential too. I I I don't think it's probably one of the great horror films, but I think it is going to be I don't know, comparable. Well, that's not fair for me to say people think A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the great horror films that I don't, I but I I love it.
Andrew: Psh. Heresy.
Thetakeup: Well, I love that series. It's my favorite horror franchise, including the first one. Like as a whole, I like playing in that that universe. And I think this also has like just a lot of potential for that. But I think this film is going to be hugely influential. and even if we don't kind of immediately see that, I think it will pan out. But
Andrew: Mm-hmm. And I and I'm encouraged by this again, the skill that Parsons exhibits in making this transition to feature filmmaking. I think it's it's he he it's a very from a very young der first time director, it's very strong freshman feature and it it gives me the same thing that I always get excited about when I see a strong film from a freshman filmmaker. It's I'm excited to see where they go next. I'm excited to see how their talent develops.
Thetakeup: Yeah, yeah, me too. having said that, it is a no vote for me for it to go into the canon. Although I'm sort of tempted in a way to say that no, this is kind of a a stake in the ground for horror filmmaking, and calling it early. But I don't think that the film not even that. I just like I I
Andrew: Yeah. You want the crut you want the crud the hipster credibility of being able to say you were there.
Thetakeup: think there's something in it that you should recognize and I did while I was watching it that we're watching something a little new, you know, and a little exciting.
Andrew: Yeah. That that's always an invigorating experience, is feeling like you're seeing something not necessarily executive because they're all those strong influences and because of how important YouTube horror culture and creepypastor culture is. This is not coming out of nowhere, but it is coming. It does feel like its ascendance to feature three hundred million dollar box office feature filmdom is a big step. It's something that itself is something new.
Thetakeup: Fucking crazy. There's a there's a whole world out there. This film made $80 million on its first weekend. Like, there's a whole world out there that I didn't know existed. and yet I was one of them, and just because the idea itself is intriguing to me. So Bullet about you. I think you like this film a little bit more than me, but
Andrew: Yeah. Ha Yeah. yeah, it's not but I don't think I'm prepared to call it an all-timer, but I think if I had to make my like halfway through the year now we're on like a a a list of important films, I think this would definitely be up there. I don't know that it's an all-timer sort of canonized film for me, but as you say, that the way that you've talked about it makes me as somebody who comes at it who came at it relatively raw, and the things that you point out about it that it's doing really successfully, I think has maybe even boosted my opinion of it a little. But I do want to revisit it. my wife hasn't seen it yet. I kind of want and she's a backrooms virgin as well. She hasn't really seen the the shorts. So I kind of want to like take her to see it and then get her reaction to it.
Thetakeup: Well, you know what I want to do now that I'm in Makon and I have the ability to see this in a French dub? I think I should do that. Can you imagine me not understanding like them speaking Simlish the entire time? Which is kind of the world I'm living in right now. well, Ethan Tarantella, our lovely producer and editor, also wrote a review, pretty positive review, over at thetakeup.com. So you can
Andrew: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Ha ha ha. Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: read that there and you know, re-listen to this for the rest of time. You know, they say that if you listen to this again, it it's a totally different, like kind of fucked up version of itself. So yeah, yeah. May maybe we'll include all the the outtakes in a backrooms edition.
Andrew: okay. The missing pieces of the take up after the episode.
Thetakeup: The the Yeah, the Atlantic hasn't been kind to us during this record, folks. Anyway, we still have one more thing. All right, every episode we like to wrap up with one more thing. it could be film related, it could be related to the film. I'm gonna go first. I think this is related to the film. Hud did you see from 2024 the documentary called Secret Mall Apartment?
Andrew: Mm. no, I have heard about this though.
Thetakeup: So this is a documentary that recounts the art installation, the live art project of Michael Townsend, art professor and artist in Providence, Rhode Island, when Providence saw a great new shopping mall, shopping center take over part of the town and
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: He and his friends and fellow artists discover an empty space in the mall and decide that it would be a really great place for them to live. and they end up living there for well, on and off. the film really gets into his art, his idea of like a kind of living art that he likes to make, but also Art as activism. you know, I I don't think this is necessarily a great film. I think it's a great story, and I think it's a fun story. and I think it relates to the kind of horrors that are the seat of the idea in backrooms and that they were talking about these ideas in development and land development, when this one of the ideas of of their art project in doing this was This idea of developers seeing unused land and calling it undeveloped areas. So them taking the natural earth as, you know, as kind of zero sum and and building upon it instead of understanding it as a space itself. And they found their own liminal space and decided to live in it and made this kind of really surreal version of a back room that became a
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: a kind of lovely space for them to dwell in. and I I think it's just a really kind of it's they're fun characters. It's a fun idea. because it's pseudo true crime. because the crime being committed is trespassing, like constant, perpetual trespassing for four years.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. It's it sounds like it's part it's consistent with like the larger urban exploration, abandoned places movement and so forth.
Thetakeup: Yeah. Yeah. And he did a lot of installation pieces in some of those. But I just think about the the idea of them, this group like crawling up between the walls of a mall and finding like between the bridge and a building, this s eight hundred square foot space that they made into a home. And I watched it right before backrooms and it it kind of Put into relief the idea of the backrooms being the ultimate horror of the backrooms is our kind of like capitalist nightmare that we live in, where we've just we've we've taken over land with infinite space of corporate buildings. And it's just like the the representation of that in this is turns a another has a different angle on it. but it's on
Andrew: Mm-hmm.
Thetakeup: Netflix, you can also rent it on different phones. It's made by Tory. Yeah, because I've been I've been wanting to watch it. I didn't know anything about it. I just saw that there was a documentary called Secret Mall Apartment. And hey, guess what? It's a pretty apt title. They did have a secret mall apartment. And it played true false in twenty twenty three, I believe, but you can watch it pretty easily online.
Andrew: And a a great title I should say. Like the title is is everything.
Thetakeup: but you can find me pretty easily online at OK Josh Ray and at the takeup STL. what about you, Andrew? You got one more thing.
Andrew: Yeah, I recently filled in a gap in my Olivia uhseas filmography knowledge. And yeah, I went and watched maybe a get maybe not a great idea to go late at night and go watch Demon Lover at Arcoton a few weeks ago. That movie, I won't even say that it's a great film, but yeah, you'll see you'll you'll go there. It
Thetakeup: Not more internet horror. I will. I will. Yeah. I'm good to I'm if you don't like your endorsement, I'll endorse it.
Andrew: It is I I'm endorsing it because I think it's a it's a it's a cool film with a lot of interesting energy and not exactly what I was expecting. I talked a few months ago about an able, mostly forgotten Abel Ferreras like lo-fi cyberpunk film called New Rose Hotel. And this kind of has similar vibes. It's not quite as explicitly sci-fi. It's more just sort of grounded in the moment that it was made in the early 2000s, but it has kind of the same sort of corporate espionage and Skullduggery as a major component of the plot and eventually sort of gets completely off the rails and I start like a lot of assays films, I sort of start to not really understand what the fuck is going on. but it doesn't really matter because you're there for the vibes, right? You're there for Gina Gishon's Yeah, Gina Gishon's I Love Gossip t-shirt.
Thetakeup: Immaculate. Immaculate vibe maker. Yeah.
Andrew: You're there for Cottie Nielsen's like incredible Eurofits. and just it's a don't even know how to describe it. So it's basically a movie about corporate espionage and corporate malfeasance in the digital entertainment industry in France and Japan, and in particular about the distribution of interactive pornography. For lack of a better word, adult games and adult entertainment and maybe s slightly dark webby torture shit, as well. And Connie Nielsen's sort of sort of the central character. She works for this French company, gets swept up, maybe doing sleazy stuff herself, and maybe being targeted by people who are trying to do dangerous things. All in the name of really it's all about money, right? Like this is this is This is a movie about money and about greedy people doing things because they're trying to establish they're trying to make money off of the worst instincts of humanity, right? but just sort of a cool stylish French thriller, corporate thriller where nothing really makes sense. Chloe Seven is there pointing a gun at Kelly Nielsen and telling her to quote unquote keep going down, which just sort of electrified something in my brain. I know. yeah, it's a strange film, but if you like Say as philomography. If you like this particular stripe of weird, decadent like thriller where there's nobody to root for at all because everybody's kind of an awful backstabbing scumbag, then I think it definitely hits those keys really nicely. And it's style, and again, it's stylish as hell, great fits, beautiful gowns, beautiful gowns.
Thetakeup: You can't say that to me. yeah, no, that's really that
Andrew: What? So what do you what do you think about this film? You say you've seen it and you like it. What do you like about it?
Thetakeup: Yeah, I mean it was a blind spot that I filled in whenever I was doing a presentation on Aseas' Irma VEP, which is something I talk about a lot.
Andrew: Mm-hmm. We're never not talking about Ermavap in some ways.
Thetakeup: Well Got a little idea.
Andrew: Yeah.
Thetakeup: I've got an idea. yeah. so yeah, it's been a while since I've seen it. It's been a few years, but he's just really he really understands that kind of culture, but the kind of dirge that it is, like digital, disgusting, you know, march of death that that film is is is I just find really cool.
Andrew: I d I really like a good sort of end of history corporate thriller. And by that I mean a a corp like a corporate espionage thriller. I kind of put Michael Mann's the insider in the same vein and that and that's that's a true story, but that that has this very sort of we're maybe on the brink of a apocalypse, a social and cultural apocalypse vibe to it that I think Demon Lover hits it it hits that very sort of specific subgenre really well.
Thetakeup: Demon Lover is also, I'm sure there's a disc forthcoming. I think Janice did a restoration of it recently. but there's a new vinegar syndrome edition. I don't know who's putting that out. Probably IFC through Ocean. we can find a vinegar syndrome's website. Makes a great double feature with his two films later called Boarding Gate, which is a kind of like international corporate thriller with Ozzy Arz Argento.
Andrew: Yeah. that's another great one, yeah. Arg is your Argento, yeah, yeah.
Thetakeup: Michael Madsen and another Kim Gordon giving one of the worst film promoters.
Andrew: Maybe maybe one of my favorite Michael Madsen performances in that film. Yeah.
Thetakeup: Yeah, yeah. Well he's always kind of great no matter what. Yeah. all right, yeah. So seconded, we've got a lot of like internet and liminal space horror. We didn't mean to do related things, but we did. but where can people find you?
Andrew: Yeah, but particularly great in that, I think. you can find me at the takeup dot com and letterbox at a y at seventy-six.
Thetakeup: Very good. Well, on our next episode, we're gonna cover a film about a stranger in a strange land. A beautiful person who arrives in Paris and doesn't understand what the fuck is going on, but is doing their best to make it happen and make it work. You've already referenced it. I've just decided that we're gonna cover Irma Vet.
Andrew: awesome. Awesome.
Thetakeup: Okay. Cool. I'm glad you agree. I'm like
Andrew: I'm excited. Should I watch the miniseries as well in preparation for this? You're probably just gonna tell me to watch the miniseries no matter what, right?
Thetakeup: They Baby baby you you go down whatever rabbit hole you need to because I want to talk
Andrew: Ha. What I really need to do is go back and watch The Vampires, the original silent films, which you've seen and I have not.
Thetakeup: I've seen all of it. I'm gonna I'm gonna pull up my presentation. We're gonna see how wrong I am. Professor Josh. And I think yeah, it could it has the potential to be our longest episode yet. We'll see Kelly Weichart's Certain Women. All right. until then, thank you, Kayla McCullough, for help with social media, Ethan Tarantella for producing, editing the show, the music by AMP.
Andrew: This is Professor this is gonna be Professor Josh episode. That's okay. That's okay.
Thetakeup: And until next time, I don't know. Bye. Ciao.
Andrew: Go home.