Justin Chang
speaker
1,638 appearances
51 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 2d ago
Justin Chang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 28 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 6.
Appearances
a wonderful Renata Reinsveig, who becomes an important secondary character.
At one point, we hear Mary articulate some of the movie's themes a little too bluntly.
We all have our loops, our habits, she says, behaviors that keep us walking in circles.
Clark's new playground, in other words, is a kind of prison, a metaphor for how we get stuck in traps of our own making.
but that's just one of many psychological readings that can be projected onto the backrooms.
For some viewers, they will evoke the thrill and the terror of extreme isolation.
For others, they'll remind them of the pandemic, when office buildings everywhere stood empty.
These are fascinating ideas, but it's when Parsons begins trying to nail them down that his movie becomes a smaller, more conventional thing than it was at the start—
Backrooms is full of mysteries within mysteries.
It would have been better to leave more of them unsolved.
Even so, at its best, Backrooms can be unnervingly effective.
It also isn't the only horror movie that has defied expectations this summer.
Since its May 15th release, the ultra-low-budget supernatural thriller Obsession has grossed more than $100 million, making it one of the year's most profitable films.
On the surface, it's a less conceptually ambitious piece of work than Back Rooms, but it's also, I think, the better and more genuinely subversive movie.
Michael Johnston plays Bear, a reserved young music store employee who's smitten with his friend and co-worker, Nicky, played by Indy Navaretti.
When he buys a novelty item at a crystal shop that claims to grant its owner a single wish, Bear half-heartedly wishes that Nikki would love him more than anyone in the world.
From there, the 26-year-old writer-director, Curry Barker, spins a story that's basically the monkey's paw meets Fatal Attraction.
Nikki and Bear become a couple, to the bewilderment of their friends and co-workers.
Before long, Nikki's magically-induced feelings for Bear begin to manifest in increasingly disturbing, shocking ways, from extreme clinginess to jealous, even homicidal fury.
Obsession is thus the latest riff on the old adage, to be careful what you wish for.
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