Directing actors, writing characters, managing tone, composing shots. Take your pick as to what Obsession has over Backrooms.

The more serious one is actually the more unserious one as far as talent is concerned

You say this yet Chiwetal acted circles around everyone in Obsession. Inde was great but she played an extremely one dimensional character so she really did the best she could with the material.

I don’t think Backrooms has strongly written characters by any shot but Obsession is entirely built on writing very thin details and then somewhat hiding them from the viewer to make them think it’s deep.

I’ve seen Dhar Mann videos with more nuance

Inde was great but she played an extremely one dimensional character so she really did the best she could with the material.

I feel like this statement works better when talking about Chiwetal. Inde and Michael's characters forsure had more depth than anyone in backrooms

Chiwetal is an amazing actor. 12 Years a Slave should've brought him many more leading roles.

Unfortunately, his character in this movie is a thin facsimile of a dramatic persona that he invents whole cloth based on what the scene calls for. Because the writing is bad.

And no, Obsession has a light touch with layers of narrative and thematic depth. Everything is there, and they don't really need a monologue to point it out. Without the monologue, what is Backrooms? An indie horror game? An Apple Vision demo?

if i were to pick one movie that represents the times we're living in from this year so far it's gotta be Backrooms

What depth did they have? Like I think you’re getting fooled by the simplistic direction Barker utilized here. He hides very simple details from the viewer but when you really take all of that and attach it to the characters, they’re even more thinly realized than anyone in Backrooms.

Indes character is ultimately nothing more than a perception given to us by Michaels character. We don’t truly know anything about her beyond enter generic details having daddy issues, being nice to homeless people, being a little quirky, not liking her job. None of this aids her as a character and Barker instead relies on showman hackery to hide how one dimensional a character she is by relying on shock value toxic dynamics with his concept to entertain.

And for Michaels character, he’s literally a plain dude with a dead cat. Zero personality. The biggest reveal is that “wow he’s obsessed with her too!” and he’s a coward. Like these are such thin details. The movie is such an absolute nothing burger that audiences had to grasp for things to make up the littlest things about these characters. “Omg this moment meant the real Nikki is trying to break out!” “Omg his friend said his confession sucked because he wants to keep him in the friend zone” “what if the cat is inside Nikki?”

It’s such utter nonsense and when you really look at what Barker has written here, it’s absolute garbage masked by shock value and showmanship hackery.

Backrooms absolutely relies on exposition and monologues which is boring for sure but depth wise, there is a lot more to these characters. Chiwetal is a great actor for his character because you need a character who can be a charismatic showman to hide all of his misery and his toxicity and his flaws. We see him failing at everything he does but we also see how he is the cause of that despair. Renates character is kind of a default a24 protagonist who’s got PTSD from bad past experiences but even then there are tidbits there. Even Mary's arc opens up suggestions that working on yourself can only do so much to put bad thoughts at the periphery of one's mind until you eventually catch a shadow at the edge of your vision. The actual Backrooms concept lends itself perfectly to their arcs. It’s less about just trauma and more about making little compromises and little diversions from what you really want to be until you eventually find yourself in a dead end. There is plenty of depth here in the concept itself and its characters. It’s just the execution is lazy and amateur. But I would much rather prefer that than using hackery to disguise how dogshit a writer and creator you actually are

This and Obsession both classics

Copped it as soon as they posted the link

does the digital have the extra content ? might rewatch this weekend

Me saying Nikki and Bear had more depth wasnt me saying they were super profound. But in comparison to the characters in backrooms, yes they had more depth. The criticism you're using against the obsession characters is there and then some with the backroom characters.

I also think you're confusing character depth with a character just having a backstory. Yes Bear was just a plain dude, but his actions and purpose in the story forsure have a layer of complexity and depth, regarding desire and autonomy. Same goes with Nicki, yes she didnt have much of a backstory but I just dont see how you can say her character has no depth especially with the play on the victim and abuser roles in the movie

As far as backrooms, we didnt see him fail at everything he did, we were told about it. And outside that one scene it rarely comes across as bro is a failure carrying the weight of it which led to his actions in the end. S*** was a leap to get to the end of his arc. While i do agree the backroom concept lends itself to have immense depth with regards to finding yourself....like you said the execution was weak and the movie rarely did anything interesting with that concept. And then taking the movie as a horror movie, it's just subpar outside of the found film elements of it. Movie is still cool but yeah

The more that time goes on, I think part of the reason there's been so much debate on how evil Bear is is simply because he's been written inconsistently. No, I don't believe that that character's reaction to realizing that Nicki is a slave begging for help in a cursed spell would be, "What's so wrong about being with me?" He's a victim when the plot needs him to be, and he's a villain when the plot needs him to be.

Thing is that backstory is absolutely a part of character depth. It’s not everything but it does play a role. Not saying you have to have backstory but the point is there is no depth to either Bear or Nikki. Again I described you their backstories but also just who they are as characters and they’re plain and boring. We don’t see them do anything that gives them character. They’re simply empty vehicles who sound like quirky Gen Z’ers to send a palatable message and convey the plot to us. When Nikki is possessed, there’s essentially two emotions conveyed: one is a super obsessed crazy psycho, the other is the real Nikki trying to get out. There’s nothing deep here. What some people have confused for depth here is in the way in which it’s conveyed. Like when we get that photo where she writes “Not me”. It’s “Easter eggs” like this that has fooled people into thinking this is deep character work but it’s like I said: when you actually just talk about these characters, you realize they’re plain, boring and very one dimensional. Bear has little to no nuance either in how he acts. He goes from a plain dude to a manipulative psychopath keeping this poor girl trapped and blames it on her? How the f*** is that believable? There is absolutely zero indication to show how he is capable of this. The only reason dumbasses believe this is because of our Tik Tok-ified generation who sees a bunch of gender war content online and gets convinced all men are bad or all women are bad and so they believe this. They say s*** like “it’s always the men who are lowkey like Bear that do this” and people say “omg yes”.

That’s why I say this movie is for terminally online idiotic teens. And that’s who’s buying this crap

By comparison, I disagree with you hard on Backrooms. We absolutely see Chiwetals character struggling. Is he not trying desperately to sell furniture and failing through half the movie? Is he not doing an ad where he is trying so hard to look charismatic and looking goofy and even falls down while doing the ad? Is he not sleeping in a bed in his own failed business? Do we not see him being clearly abusive to his deformed ex wife in the backrooms? We see it consistently that he’s a f*** up, it’s not just told to us. I absolutely believe Parsons shows us quite a bit in their behavior (Renate being calm and quiet yet just as much of a wreck as Chiwetals character. We see her mannerisms clearly echoing someone who is barely able to function). I just say the execution was lacking when it came to the dialogue in key moments where characters have to tell us and explain to us everything as if they’re robots and not real people and that is where the film falters. But they are 100% far more real and empathetic characters than anything in Obsession which just plays to empty gender war lunatics

I'm not saying it's totally successful, but I don't necessarily feel like Backrooms is trying to flesh out its characters entirely, there's certainly points where the emptiness feels a bit intentional, because the movie is interested in compressed allegory.

Idk how you can say it's intentional. You're not watching Michael Snow's Wavelength. It's not the webseries. It's a trauma therapy story centering on two characters who are explicitly the subject of the movie. Two characters who have backgrounds and arcs and on-the-nose conversations with one another.

I agree that's not the interesting thing about the movie. Which makes it a problem.

Bingo

The movie is cool because it has an interesting idea and execution to describe trauma horror.

It's an interesting idea. It's a bad movie. Half baked

I think Clark's acting and monster carries it for me. It did felt thin at some points, but I figured that was the risk making a movie from a web series. I don't really hold horror movies with a high brow 99% of the time.

I don't think I'm ready to mount a full defense yet unfortunately, just going off vibes for now. Will be very curious to see how that rewatch hits, maybe I'll come over more to your side.

Yeah not saying backstory is unimportant but it's just not a requirement for character depth.

The things about Nikki is that while yes she shift from the two extremes of obsessed psycho and her real personality. The depth explored here was the progression of the psycho persona. Right after the wish was made she was able to break out here and there, but as the movie went on these moments became more spared. The act of her losing autonomy the longer the abuse occur was depth. The fact that she literally couldnt break out until her abuser was dead was a***ogous to Stockholm, that was depth

Cmon man lol, the whole "nice guy" stereotype was for these seemingly nice and plain guys but are actually super manipulative. That was Bear, the idea that he was super manipulative despite seeming so normal and plain is pretty believable. The movie plays with the abuser and victim roles between Bear and Nikki and who's the real victim and abuser and this results in something interesting.

We see him filming an ad for his store and thats really all that comes from that. Sure him sleeping in the store is something but again thats it. It would be more impactful if we actually saw him putting great effort in and then failing. But the only time we REALLY saw him doing anything was him tryna prove to his therapist that the backrooms was real, and that was the peak of the movie. Him being abusive to the deformed wife rarely counts because it after at the end of his character arc and felt like such a leap and just felt like a generic he was drove to madness by being overly obsessive trope.

I didnt really feel much empathy for anyone in that movie. The therapist was damn near a robot and Chiwetal character, im not sure what i was supposed to be emphatic about. Idk what was so real about either of them, they felt like a means to the ends in just exploring the lore of the rooms

Sure but the whole two persona thing is a constant with Nikki. It’s just that one gradually overpowers the other as time goes on. There’s nothing deep here. This is mostly the work of the concept here within Barkers rules (which he himself has admitted doesn’t make sense)

As for Bear being the “nice guy” (and the “nice guy” concept itself), this is again just over generalizations on twitter and TikTok of these types. It’s no different to a dude having bad experiences with career women and so starts telling the internet “don’t date women with careers! They’re not marriage material”. It’s toxic and generalizes a whole bunch of people who aren’t actually like that despite having some shared characteristics. That is the whole basis of the empty gender war on both sides. And in Bears case, there is absolutely nothing to him that showcases he is capable of being an abusive piece of s*** until it happens. He mostly just comes off as a cowardly shy awkward but well meaning teenager who needs validation from his d***head friend. He doesn’t even like Nikki for nefarious reasons (simply off looks or status. He appears to actually like her character). So the fact he goes from this to literally raping her is such a massive leap and only works if you’re a misandrist freak who has deduced all plain shy nice guys are evil.

The thing is that chiwetals character isn’t this. He, like Bear, appears to be someone you feel bad for because of their bad luck (bear for losing his cat, being shy, not able to get with his crush. Clark for his divorce, everything going under). But the difference is Clark is actually a piece of s*** and you see it in how he treats his photographers (literally asking them to be guinea pigs) and in how he treats his ex wife in the backrooms, which I disagree on this being a nothingburger, this adds a lot of context to who Clark really was in their marriage and shows there’s a lot he hid to his therapist on why their marriage failed.

But ultimately the reason I could empathize with Clark or Mary was that their flaws are honestly shown. We actually understand it. It doesn’t just leap out of nowhere like in Obsession. And I appreciate that Parsons had a maturity to still humanize Clark despite his awful behaviors. He understood he is a victim in his own ways and as a result he has turned others into victims. In Obsession, it’s just a circus. Nobody is real. I don’t even get why I’m supposed to feel bad for the real Nikki beyond her being a victim. I don’t know her character. She has zero depth.

I'd go as far as saying that the dark heart of America is not embodied by a therapist enabling her patient. We actually don't have any empathy or understanding beyond that space let alone a harmful surplus. All we have is tough love and blame which is what this movie ultimately advocates for. Especially for black men!

Can’t be letting gamers make movies, that’s the lesson here. You end up with Cutscene: The Motion Picture

I’d rather eat a gun than watch this guy’s attempt at rehashing the beats of Portal in Blender, with the scaffolding of a normal film haphazardly bolted on later in an attempt at making two bad flavors cohere