The Backrooms & The Amazing Digital Circus Double Feature

This is going to be a weird one for sure. It’s not about games or the Internet or anything. but it’s about two web series. The Backrooms, and the Amazing Digital Circus.

I saw them both IN theaters! I have not been to a movie theater in…about a decade. Not because I hated them. I actually loved going to the movies back in the day. But after you have kids, it’s hard to actually give two tinks about going out to a place to sit in a spot for two hours versus just watching something at home. Plus movies haven’t really been great lately…I can count on one (two if I’m being generous) hand how many movies I’d actually say I enjoyed the past 10 years.

But I actually went a theater to watch two of my favorite web series. I love the Backrooms, I loved The Amazing Digital Circus! I got Mrs.Dad to babysit the kids for me so I could enjoy two movies in one whole night. Was going to be a great experience!

Before we continue

SPOILERS ARE ABOUND - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Movie theaters are god awful now

What the fuck happened, man?

I went to AMC Theaters. The last theater I went to was a Regal Theater and it was fine? It had the recliner seats, it was nice. But I go to the AMC theater and it was just…I guess the same: But almost twice as expensive.

The last movie I saw in theaters was one of the Marvel movies with my Pops. I don’t remember which one. But we went, we got a popcorn and two sodas and it was roughly 40 bucks. For one movie, one soda and one popcorn, it was over fifty dollars. I think it was 18 for the ticket, 18 for the soda and 12 for the popcorn or some nonsense like that. The popcorn was stale, the soda was…I mean it was soda. It’s Aspartame and Carbonated water. It wasn’t too watered down I guess

They weren’t popping fresh corn, it’s whatever was at the bottom of the bucket from earlier in the day. I didn’t finish it. I ate a few handfuls, gave up and threw it away after the first showing.

But they had a FULL bar, some kind of arcade…thing/area and a full menu of food. I cannot imagine how much the drinks would be if soda is over ten bucks, and I also cannot imagine how terrible the food must be if they couldn’t get Popcorn correct.

A pretzel was 18 dollars. For 18 dollars I can have a real dinner. Why the fuck would anyone spend that kind of money on a frozen, microwaved pretzel? You can go to the Costco to get a box of the damn things for 15 bucks.

But anyway, I will not be returning to the movie theater anytime soon.

This isn’t about the theater, it’s about the movies. But first, let’s go over

The Rating Scale

Here at Dad’s Hyperspace, I’ve adopted a new way of Evaluating things. I call it the Dad Scale.

The Dad Scale (Or DS) is flexible and gives you context for my ratings. Different “Things” are going to have a different result for each grade, but the grades themselves are pretty self explanatory.

Rating	Description
S	One of my favorites. Would rewatch reguarly just for the fun of it
A	A Great Time. Will Rewatch for special events (Christmas, Halloween, etc)
B	A Good Movie. Will recommend and watch with others. But wouldn’t rewatch it myself out of the blue.
C	It’s fine and/or not my thing. Probably a bit niche. Would only recommend to people if I knew you liked this sort of thing. Wouldn’t rewatch unless I was with a group who wanted to see it. I wouldn’t complain.
D	Not Great or I just didn’t like it very much. It’s not my thing or it was just jarring. Would watch in a group or with others for a “Bad Movie Night”. Wouldn’t recommend.
F	Bad stinky garbo. Wouldn’t recommend, wouldn’t watch with others, even as a joke.

Something to always remember is that you and I are probably going to disagree. I try to give good reasons for the ratings I give. But sometimes, you just can’t account for taste.

So without further stalling for time, I want to jump in to the 2nd film I watched with-

The Backrooms

TL;DR - The Backrooms was great. I enjoyed the premise, it’s a slow burn but it keeps you interested in the story the entire time. B+ on the Dad Scale

The Backrooms is a web series that’s fairly well known on the net so I’m not going to get too deep in to the deets. But if you’re interested in the background of the series I do recommend the Wendigoon Videos that go over the series. He’s got two videos, the first one (Linked above) is the general stories and he has other videos that get in to more detail and wraps it up in to the (then upcoming) Movie.

The director of The Backrooms and much of the more popular/recent videos (The Webseries), Kane Parsons, was not the original “creator” of the “Concept” of The Backrooms. It’s from a 4chan creepypasta post the involves a picture from the early 2000s and depicted “the” room with garish yellow wallpaper that was just pretty creepy overall. The poster made a whole background about it. Then people got involved and started making shared fiction around it. It’s overall pretty fun. I’m not usually in to shared fiction, but I like The Backrooms and I like the SCP Foundation, so it’s fine.

I wanted to see The Backrooms specifically because I really enjoyed Kane Parsons’ webseries and was excited to watch it. Plus the opportunity to support more original work was always nice.

So, I don’t know how to structure this review. I’m not going to go beat for beat on the story. But I want to highlight some things that I liked, and that I didn’t like. So here’s a list of things I wanted to highlight, good and bad.

ATMOSPHERE

If there’s one thing I can say about The Backrooms, one key aspect about the film that I truly believes represents it as a whole, it’s the Atmosphere it generates.

The film opens on the main character, Clark, having a bad time. He’s divorced, has problems with alcohol and sees a therapist going through her own trauma. The opening to “The First Contact” is probably some of the best building up I’ve seen in a movie. Like yeah, you’re gonna see The Backrooms, you’re waiting on it and the movie knows it, it knows that’s what you want and it just…builds up to it. It’s great and i love it.

That first contact though is…The entire reason it got a +. The first few steps and the initial exploration are just so great. It builds, it’s suspensful, it fills you with questions and it was the high point of the movie for me. The Backrooms “Feel” bad. You can’t even really say why they feel bad, they invoke anxiety and just make you not want to be there and it’s just great.

But now it’s time for the next layer of this sandwhich, which is

Async Institute

I really felt like they did not use these guys nearly enough. Throughout the series, you are watching from the point of view of various Async Institute members. (FYI: These are the guys who discovered and maybe made The Backrooms. All the Monsters Inc hazmat people work for the Institute).

They exist in the movie. You see their cameras, the opening scene is the found footage of one of them being eaten by a Grue. (Which…this scene is also down below…). They help put some pieces together for the other main character, Mary (Clark’s Therapist) at the end of the movie and it’s…fine. I just wish they played a larger role in the movie because they had lore to work with and could have made things a bit more fleshed out but…I mean the movie isn’t worse because of it.

Something I was a bit “eh” on was

The 2nd Act

During the 2nd act of the movie. Clark goes to get his Assistant Manager of his Furniture Store and her boyfriend to record his/their adventures in the backroom. It’s great fun for sure. They got in, they both die, he goes crazy. It’s great.

But my problem with the whole situation was that the…mystery or the ambiguity of the setting was a bit lost here. Clark, who was our main character through the story, goes all spooky and he’s been there for god knows how long. He’s acclimated to the place, he actually enjoys it somewhat. But to me it sort of signals that to us, the viewers, that there’s no real new tricks coming out. Like, yeah, we see “The Monster” and it’s great. But I really wish they had been able to spend a bit more time in the “what the hell is this place” mode that I enjoyed so much at the start.

Also Kat dies off screen which is kind of lame. Like the boyfriend who’s name I don’t remember get’s a pretty great death scene, she just kind of runs around a wall and then dies sometime later which was a bit weak.

The whole section was just fine. But I guess I’m not sure…why this was happening. Clark, the main character, as far as we know wasn’t really…“Lost” to The Backrooms yet. So why did he want to go back and…record so much of it. Literally walking through a wall, taking that footage to a news station, bringing them there and showing them would be…enough, I think?

Also this is the point where we discover that one of the Async Institute scientists recognizes Clark from his crappy TV commercial as the same guy he saw on his security Camera. I don’t think that…went anywhere. These guys don’t go to the Store to find Mary or Clark, they find Mary in The Backrooms, he never uses this information as far as I remember. So it was really cool to see this scientist guy with his family, watching TV, and seeing the guy he saw in The Backrooms in a local TV commercial so…I wish they used that more. (Maybe they did and I didn’t realize it cuz I am dumb).

The “Monster”

I don’t have much to say, I thought the monster was great. It looked great, it was creepy, it was gross, loved it. I appreciate the lack of jump scares with this guy. He’s just waltzes in all fukkin creepy, then he goes nuts and now it’s a chase through The Backrooms and I loved it a bunch.

The Ending

The Ending was fine. I don’t think it was a big a twist as they were hoping. It was fine. The Science man explains what’s going on. By the time you put those pieces together, you see a “Twist” that…I man yeah, it’s a twist, I expected it, but still, a twist.

Overall

Overall, it’s a slow burn that I loved a bunch. I would definitely throw this on during Halloween and it might make it in to the regular Halloween/Spooky Season rotation. It kept me intrigued and wanting to know more, to see more the entire time, and when it ended I felt like I got a front row seat to another part of the long running web series.

I really do wish we got more time in the “Mystery” phase of the backrooms. It felt a bit rushed that, after Clark had entered the backrooms. We only get one (REALLY GREAT part, mind you) part of him just meandering, exploring, trying to figure out what in tarnation is goin’ on. That right there? ho boy that was some good stuff.

The ending was fine. The twist was ’aight. It wasn’t really a twist, so much as a…inevitability of the themes it surrounds. I’m doing my best to avoid heavy spoilers here, but if you’ve seen the ending, yeah it doesn’t feel like a twist, but it’s put in front of you like “Oh here’s the big twist wooAoaAAOo”

A Solid B+. It’s something I would watch again during the right time and if the mood was right. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes a good, solid horror movie that’s scary without jump scares and startling you. You definitely do not need any sort of background or need to be aware of the webseries or creepypastas surrounding the backrooms. Just show up and have a spooky time.

Also, yes, I have heard the “reviews” from the terminally online. If you’re someone who’s fried their dopamine receptors and can only think in 6 second bursts, then yeah you’ll probably hate The Backrooms, like people who feed conversations in to ChatGPT to avoid having to engage with anything, but can’t form their own thoughts would probably hate having to sit and pay attention to a 1.5 hour movie without being able to put a phone in front of their face.

Next is a web series that I also really love,

The Amazing Digital Circus.

Two things, I waited until the final episode was available on Youtube before posting this review. I am aware of the leaks, I did not see them, I saw this…2nd to opening night. The other thing:

No I do not engage with the fandom.

The Fandom

I am aware of “The Drama”. I do not get involved in Fandoms. I have seen the creator, Goosewerks, talk publicly about how the fandom is…pretty fuckkin’ awful and I agree and support them fully.

Apparently, “The Drama” came about because Goosewerks wasn’t super bummed about the leak. They effectively said “Yeah that sucks, what canya do?” and the fandom was mad, real mad. Why? Unsure. I guess they were mad that the movie was spoiled and Goosewerks didn’t immedietly climb up on a cross and die for those sins or something.

This isn’t going to be a “I hate fandoms” blog post. But I will say that in all the things I enjoy, I usually do not engage with “The Fandoms”. You have other “thing enjoyers” but when you get in to the territory of people who make “thing” a core part of who they are as a person, you get in to absolute psychos and the absolute worst humans to have to interact with imaginable.

The difference between some random asshole on the internet, and a “Fandom” person is that the random asshole will just be an asshole, then eventually fade away in to insignificance. Fandom people have staying power. Thing is their entire life, or an absolute core pillar of their life. They will sit there for years and harass you, they will dox you, they will make your life hell because it’s not just “Thing”. It’s a holy war, and they are the chosen one who has to fight it.

That’s a lot of words to say “I don’t engage with the Fandom and do not care about their opinions”

Note I did see a lot of people dressed up at the theater. I thought it was cute and had they Kinger costumes for six foot, six inch tall and just as wide men, I’d probably have dressed up too. (I’d be my OC character Boigar and shout my catch phrase “It’s time for a tasty boiga!” and slam a full Wendy’s Baconator right straight down the gullet)

Anyway

The Amazing Digital Circus..again

TL;DR - I give the ending, specifically, a B for a few reasons you’d see below. The Entire series I give an A, would rewatch again, would recommend.

The Amazing Digital Circus was one of those things that just popped up in my Youtube feed, I saw Caine’s fukkin weird eyeball mouth head, clicked it, fell in love. I don’t have any real connection or history with the voice actors. I know Caine is voiced by someone famous probably. Maybe the others are too, I don’t know. I approached the series as a guy on the outside and enjoyed it.

Digital Circus is a type of show/series I call “Lost-Likes”. It’s a series that builds lots of different mysteries. You solve one mystery but it just makes new ones. There’s always hidden details, things happening now, especially spooky/weird character behavior that you will later find out was really important and setting up new threads.

Lost was not the first series to do this. Nor was it the last, but Lost perfectly encapsulates the phrase: “What if we made a mystery that had so many levels, you’d need a flow chart to really understand it, and even then…”.

The series perfectly takes that idea and thrusts it down on the table. You start with “The Grand Mystery”. The thing all the characters want to solve, the thing that, when known, will unlock ALL the secrets and mysteries. EVERYTHING will be made clear once this one thing is solved. But there’s all these other mysteries, many of whom have to be solved first before The Grand Mystery can be solved!

It’s a classice trope of the Lost-Likes. Remember that damn Polar Bear? Iconic. (Sadly, in more ways than one, as you’ll see soon).

Now, I’m not going to get in to the entire series. I recommend you go watch it. I loved it frankly. It does set up The Grand Mystery (“How tf do I get outta here???”) but also introduces so much “more”. What is Caine? What does he want? Who made him? Where are we? How did we get here? Why do we lose our memories? Why did Pomni see The Exit Door? What the heck was up with the butterfly? Why, What, How, Who and For what reason???

It’s a great series. It’s a Solid A. It isn’t going in to my favorite of all time, but it’s something that, if they ever released a DVD/Blu-Ray. I’d buy it and it would be a rewatch candidate for sure.

I want to talk specifically about the ending, because I have thougths. I’m going to get my most controversial opinion out of the way first:

The ending felt rushed.

Suddenly we were at the end of the series, and just like Lost and all the Lost-Likes, it didn’t really know how to end the thing, so we wrapped up as many threads as we could and got the fuck outta there. It’s such a common occurance and trope for these mystery series to just shit their pants at the last turn before the finish line. Some won’t survive.

They shit themselves so bad and you know it, it’s everywhere, it stinks, they’re covered in it. They flee to the nearby porta potty and you know that hair thin paper is nothing more than a show of faith. The Unicef rice delivery to North Korea. It’s not going to make anything better, but you have to do something.

Other’s might push through it. They are aware, they know, everyone knows, but they finish. Maybe they walk, maybe they run, but they finish and then get the fuck outta there as quickly as possible.

Digital Circus definitely shit their pants. But you wouldn’t know it. They finish, they do the arms up in the air, they’re hootin’ and hollerin’ a bit. But it stinks, you can’t be sure what it is and before people investigate, they’re gone. They’re going to ruin the Uber drivers night, but it’s a problem for later, they’re a hero, for now.

I have a few gripes with the ending and I want to kind of go through each one.

I don’t really give a fuck about Jax as a character

The ending was Jax focused. Spoilers: he abstracts. He was setup to be “the mystery guy”. Unlike the big mystery, this is a guy who’s got more about him, more connections to The Grand Mystery than anyone. What are they hiding? What secrets or mysteries do they solve or uncover if you can solve their mysteries.

The problem with Jax, is that he’s just not a good character. He’s a self referential Anti-Hero Character, like Deadpool, he makes comments about he’s the “Comic Relief Charcter” and this and that, but it’s just not that entertaining, nor was he very funny. Honestly the shit “around” Jax was funny. “Forced Veganism” was such a great joke and I still giggle about it when I think back on the series.

But Jax? Not great. He’s whiney, he’s what a 13 year old thinks is cool. He’s not a “Guy who’s been traumatized”. He’s just kind of an unlikeable prick the entire series and I get it, that was the point, they were VERY quick to point out that ’Yeah he’s a dick but he’s got a real traumatic past involving a frog girl he was gonna boof and a clown he was gonna boof maybe” and you’d think “Okay alright we can make this work” but it never pays off.

So having the ending revolve around Jax and solving his mysteries was an instant turn off. Pomni hugs the dude, goes in to his brain palace or some shit and goes through memories. You learn about Ribbity (The frog person he was gonna bone) and Kaufmo (the clown guy who dies at the start of the first episode). You learn they were great friends and were always hanging out. Which, we knew! We already knew all this shit, so why is the ending so much of this? I think it was just a “Let’s get the fuck outta here” mode at this point, which, fair.

So you go through, I guess, his memories or how he sees others in comically exageratted scenes which is fine. I didn’t really…get anything out of it. Like yeah he thinks everyone around him is superficial and dumb, we knew that, I don’t need full scenes about it.

Then you have this long sequence where he’s telling Ribbit his life story. His mom is bipolar or something and his dad is an ass and she was goin’ through a mental episode and he pushed her and he ran away from home. He was homeless and that was the last thing he remembers. He’s pours his heart out to the frog girl and they’re for real gonna bone but the clown interupts him and he’s flustered because he’s windsocking real bad but there’s nothing to do but flee, which he does.

Because of that, now he’s an asshole to the frog person because he’s afraid that if people see who he really is they won’t like him or find him annoying, so he does this thing where he’s a dick first, so you can’t be mean to him later and bweak his wittle heart :C :C :C :C

The problem: Jax is not a good enough character to make that work. It’s less of a “I’m gonna be mean first, so I won’t feel bad when you’re mean to me”. The dude is a complete narcissist and is just a shit person. Knowing his backstory doesn’t make any of that make sense. Basically, after he starts bein’ a dick. The frog abstracts. Kaufmo is devestated that his once best friend is now gone. Jax, who is just digging deeper, continues to be a dick. Kaufmo abstracts later, and now Jax is real sad about it.

The problem is that…he did that, he caused both of those things, he was a dick for no reason and now those people are dead and we’re kind of supposed to just go “Dang he’s had a hard life poor Jax this is why he’s such a dick all the time”. Brother: he was always a dick, he was a dick when he got there and then he was a dick later and people died because, honestly, they put too much of themselves in this dude.

So his whole background/reveal/explanation didn’t actually make me give a fuck about Jax, it just kind of vindicated how I already kind of felt. Dude’s a dick, he’s a dick because he’s a dick, not because of some tragedy that befell him, he did the tragedy, twice.

let me frame this with a comparison.

A detective who’s just a mean SOB to everyone. You learn that his first partner was killed on the job, he was careless and gets them killed. So now he keeps everyone away so he doesn’t have to experience that kind of hurt ever again. It’s trite, it’s been done to death, but it’s a direct reasoning path from “Why is this guy a dick” to “I understand why you’re mean, but I’m gonna show you how to love again” and then you have I think 40% of all 90’s movies.

Jax doesn’t have that. He’s embarrased because he trauma dumped on this person and wants to…I guess not have done that? Which shows that he came in to this an ass. Nothing of that ties really in to his mom. Like yeah his Mom had mental issues and was shitty when he tried to console in her about something, but like…okay?

Also he like, pushed her and she didn’t get up so he ran away from home thinking he killed her. We don’t actually know if he killed her or not…it doesn’t ever really go anywhere

So yeah, Jax is the worst character, so having the ending be about him was…disheartening.

Also: The way he died was absolutely jarring. Dude dies in a flashback. He walks up to Pomni who’s just kind farting around and does the 14 year old anime thing of “hey I uh…ugh, nevermind. I’m too cool for this conversation” and walks away, and Pomni narrates to us that “I wish I had spoken up” and they cut to an abstraction running around and they’re all sad like anyone gave a shit about this awful dude. I don’t care that he died, get to the good shit already.

I don’t even like the guy and he was done dirty, it’s so jarring I honestly feel like they…forgot to make the scene where he Abstracts and they just went “oh shit oh shit oh man okay just like, throw in a quick voice line and we’re good to go we gotta get tf outta here dawg”.

An aside - The key

I hate how Pomni, in the mind theater, was given a literal key to Jax’s mystery. I love stupid shit like that, and I felt insulted.

Aside Over.

Next up

I wanted more time with Caine & the surrounding narrative

Caine is probably the biggest wasted potential of the series entirely. Because we see so much buildup to figuring out “Who” or “What” Caine is. Yeah we know he’s an AI and during the series we see “Caine” developing. There’s a whole plot about these two orbs, one Orange and one Blue. The Orange one like, eats the Blue one, and then becomes Caine, I guess.

My hope for the ending is that we got to see more about Caine, how he came to be, what was up with the two different orb things. What is up with Bubble? is Bubble an NPC? Is Bubble a Digital Circus character? What the hek is going on?

A quick aside - Why is Caine Back

So the last episode before the ending, Kinger deleted Caine and it’s the big “Oh shit” moment of the series. He’s gone, the Digital Circus is falling apart, it’s the lowest of the lows. Jax dies about it for some reason, it’s a problem.

So then he’s just kinda back. We see him floating around in cyberspace and he’s just back it’s okay he’s back.

Why? How? For WHAT reason? Yeah to give us probably one of the best scenes of the ending and definitely the top 10 of the series. But it’s never explained why this dude is back or for what reason. He’s just back.

Aside over.

So Caine is in cyberspace or something and he’s all Smeagled out. He’s having an internal conflict about how those guys are dicks and they tried to kill him and he gives a great line “They already did”.

So the Blue orb is the evil one, and Caine, in a very touching scene, removes the blue orb from his mouth…teeth…head thing. And just kinda yeets it in to cyberspace or something.

Here’s the problem: what the fuck was that about? I wanted the build up, the reason why this blue orb was important and it feels like it should have been there, but it wasn’t and I just…don’t understand why. It felt, well, rushed, which is the running theme. But man, I really wanted to get more out of Caine, out of Bubble, out of any of this.

Further, we never learn about the institute that designed Caine or even the Digital Circus. Like yeah, the characters are brain scans, there’s no getting out. But how did their brain scans wind up here? They put on a headset and many of them are with people while they do it. (Also I have no proof but I called the ending mhm for sure)

My first thought was that Gangle’s “Person” and Jax’s “Person” were both in places to get a brain scan. The brainscan of Gangle could have come from the accident they suffered. Jax could have answered a local ad for “Medical testing” since he was homeless. The other non-employee characters? No real connection or reason why their brain scans were there.

But there’s so many other questions. Where tf are they? Are they on a server? Who’s running the server? Is someone watching them? What happens when the power goes out? They die forever? What actually is an abstraction, why does it happen and why does it happen the way it does?

Do you see the theme here? There are so many more interesting things to learn about then “Jax pushed his mom now he’s a dick”.

Despite it all, I still loved it.

Look, I spend way too many words shitting on the ending, but I’d still give it a B. Why? Because even the things I didn’t like, they did so well.

I didn’t like Jax as a character, nor did I like that the ending was so focused on him. But the entire ride was so well done. Caine’s rushed arch? Annoying, but very well done. It’s like eating a meal that isn’t your favorite, but it’s prepared by a five star chef. Yeah it’s good, I loved it, would probably ask you to change it anyway because I didn’t want fish, I wanted chicken.

Everything was done so well and just…it felt like a true “Ending” to the series. Yeah I have gripes, but even with those gripes, it never made the ending “Worse” (not all of it, I guess).

The rest of the ending was great, the “way” it was ended was great. They see the people they used to be, living their lives. They accept that they aren’t them anymore and they just live there in the Cirucs. They live in a simulation and they boof and they go on adventures and Caine becomes part of the family. The final ending scene with the characters all getting on a bus? Great, loved it. The whole “These random guys have no clue how close they truly are” trope is something I always love in media.

Conclusion

The ending left me wanting. It’s not my favorite episode, but it’s a satisfying end to a great ride.

The ending is a B, with the whole series as an A. I’d rewatch the series if the mood was right. Maybe on a plane ride or on vacation, where I can just sit and enjoy some wacky fun. The ending is always going to leave me a bit sour with all the much better mysteries left on the table.

But honestly, if it didn’t shit itself before that finish line, it wouldn’t be a Lost-Like now would it?

Thanks for reading

Sorry this became a mess. I took notes on the shows and just kinda wrote this down. I didn’t write too much about The Backrooms because it’s still in theaters (I think) and I seriously recommend going to the theater to watch it. I’d say the same for the Digital Circus ending, but It’s on Youtube and I think isn’t playing anymore, but if it is, check it out

This is Dad, going to touch some grass.