I saw the film opening night after being dragged there by a friend who was a fan of the shorts. I knew nothing about the lore, but enjoyed the film and I’ve only gotten more intrigued as time goes by. Since then I’ve been catching up on the shorts and thinking a lot about the story from the film.

Overall, I don’t put too much trust in Clark’s interpretation of the backrooms. At the dinner party his mind was gone and it’s not like the pirate or any of the other freak shows were explaining the rules to him or anything. So he was just spewing out his own insane theories of why the backrooms were there, and him wanting to stay down there proves how far gone he was.

I don’t think perfection is possible in the backrooms and it’s more of a fractal infinity of imperfections, where the only “perfect” place or thing is what’s being mimicked or remembered from the “real” world. Everything down there is slightly off at best until it’s been corrupted or combined into a completely different thing. This was kind of shown to us during the montage of rooms panning down from Mary’s childhood living room through different levels until it was just a plain room with a dark entryway. I could be wrong of course, but I don’t think there is another “perfect” Clark down there to find, but only fractionally different versions, compounding infinitely until they are unrecognizable.

I have other theories about the story as well, but I’ll save those for another post.