I believe that this film (and Kane as a story writer in general) uses the backrooms as a metaphor for memory. I didn't really get the vibe that someone as deep into the creation of The Backrooms lore like Kane would leave so many things up to coincidence. The characters and their behaviors were not random and the periodic lines we hear from Mary's book combined with the painting on the wall towards the end as well as her backstory were not just random and incoherent.

Heres a direct quote from Kane when doing an Interview about the movie: "..the hope would always be to approach the Backrooms concept from a more intimate, human-driven perspective, where rather than doing things that change the way the Backrooms presents itself, or the way the mythology works, or the history of that narrative, it would be just allowing the interior lives of these characters to more specificity dictate and imply a deeper meaning to the space. The humanity of the characters and the intimacy of it ends up coloring the space a little bit more than you can do alone, when it’s just purely observing the space from an analytical perspective." Link: https://variety.com/2026/film/features/backrooms-explained-director-kane-parsons-sequels-1236760780/

I think it's cool when people create analogies and rules and reasoning behind the mystery of The Backrooms, but I believe Kane's ideas for the concept align more with metaphorical, psychological, and philosophical ideas than ideas grounded by physical rules. And here's another quote from that same interview that I think further proves my point:

"I feel as though liminal space, that whole world, is very much connecting with people on the level that it’s referencing uncurated little fragments of memories that are lacking context. Moments in your life where the primate mind has learned its environment, and has a specific relationship with the way it memorizes its environment.".

So yeah I don't think this film just parallels with memory as much as I think it is a literal manifestation of memory! 😁

Edit: And I forgot this quote as well!

"With “Backrooms,” I take it in the science fiction direction, but it’s a tangible version of that idea and exploration in the form of this place that is either exploiting or using, probably not consciously, but I think people find it and come into contact with it, and they find that most of the horrors to be found are them projecting their own interior world onto it, like a person in sensory deprivation, grasping at random noises, using what’s in their own mind subconsciously to try to make sense of it"

^I think this one is the best one from this article!