More Thoughts About Freud, Jung, and Backrooms
[Note: spoilers for the movie Backrooms]
I’ve been fascinated by Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay “The Uncanny” for many years. So, I wanted to explain more how it and other critical theory concepts fit thematically with the film Backrooms. Here is my first essay on the uncanny in Backrooms.
Freud used the German word Unheimlich for The Uncanny. Heimlich means homey, and so, we might assume that unheimlich means strange, unfamiliar, or not like home. However, it’s more complicated than that, and Freud spends most of the essay explicating definitions and examples of the word. He writes:
“In general we are reminded that the word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which without being contradictory are yet very different: on the one hand, it means that which is familiar and congenial, and on the other, that which is concealed and kept out of sight.” Then, Freud paraphrases a scholar named Schelling: “According to him everything is uncanny that ought to have remained hidden and secret, and yet comes to light.”
In a 2019 essay on “The Uncanny,” I explained: “In other words, it’s not unfamiliarity itself, but the inability to tell whether something is familiar or unfamiliar, which is so unsettling and threatening.” (Sorry if there’s now a paywall at the Book Riot link above. There wasn’t originally. You can view more of my essays on the uncanny, including that one, for free at this link on my website.)
Déjà vu (“already seen” in French) is the feeling that you’ve already seen or experienced something you haven’t. This can also be uncanny, though there’s far more to the uncanny and the Backrooms than déjà vu. The idea that the Backrooms evoke déjà vu apparently resonates with many people.
YouTube videos on the Backrooms use taglines like, “You’ve been here before.” Of course, you haven’t. They’re an unreal, often physically impossible, place. Shira Chess calls this “the institutional gothic.” Institutions like hospitals and offices often have an eerie sameness. In a flashback, Mary’s mother was institutionalized in a hospital that resembled the Backrooms.
Freud continues: “Thus heimlich is a word the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich. Unheimlich is in some way or other a sub-species of Heimlich.” In 2019, I wrote: “Heimlich, homey, has a secondary meaning close to hidden or clandestine, which is where it becomes the Unheimlich or uncanny.”
This tension, between the familiar and unfamiliar, or the comforting and terrifying, is the heart of the Backrooms. In the movie, Kat, Bobby, and Mary are repelled by the Backrooms and Clark’s affinity for them. Clark, in contrast, is fascinated by the Backrooms and compelled to explore deeper into them. He ultimately calls them his home and says, “This is right where I’m supposed to be.”
In my first essay on the movie, I said that the Backrooms could symbolize a person’s unconscious or subconscious mind. Many people, including Dragana Favre, have also compared them to Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious (not only one person’s subconscious or unconscious). The Backrooms start out as a manifestation of Clark’s unconscious mind in the film but also incorporate other people’s likenesses and memories.
Despite the literalization of early psychological concepts, ironically, Mary’s psychotherapy is ineffective for Clark. As this video explains, Clark is too self-aware for therapy. Instead of trying to change, he wants validation from Mary that he’s always right and everyone else is always wrong. Mary’s role-playing exercise is intended to help him acknowledge how he hurt his wife, Barbara. Instead, Clark grows to enjoy it, using it as an excuse to reenact the abuse. Clark also quotes Mary’s own words to her but hasn’t learned anything.
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A Jungian reading of Backrooms acknowledges the collective unconscious and the shadow self. Jung is often misquoted online about his archetype of The Shadow as follows: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” He didn’t say or write this.
Here is the actual quote: “The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves.” This is from the book Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self by C. G. Jung.
Captain Clark killing the original Clark literalizes his failure to confront and integrate his shadow self. Nowadays, we might call not integrating your shadow self a form of spiritual bypassing. The original Clark says excitedly to Captain Clark: “This is Mary. She’s our therapist. She says it’s OK. It’s just the way we’re wired. We don’t have to change!” He absolves himself of any responsibility right before Captain Clark kills him.
Sure, the symbolism is a little on-the-nose, but understanding yourself isn’t enough, if you continue to hurt people like before. The external, separate part of Clark kills him. And yes, I wish his “monstrous” and evil side didn’t have more disabilities than the original Clark. Like many other horror movies, Backrooms is full of unnecessary and ableist clichés.
The Christmas tree scene, with “Feliz Navidad” playing off-pitch, introduces the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life. This is an example of a disabled person being used as a jump-scare in horror. Sutter uses a wheelchair (which blurs into his body and a lamp) and has a facial difference. I like that Clark implies that the original Sutter uses a wheelchair also. I’m unsure whether Sutter had a facial difference in the outside world, like he does in the film.
I get it: the Still Lifes are turning into furniture. Captain Clark has a wooden leg because he is an amputee, but it also looks like a table leg. Another Still Life has stuffing in his stomach, like he’s a couch or a teddy bear. Clark insists that the Still Lifes can’t feel or think and aren’t real people. Mary recognizes them as human and is horrified when Clark hurts them.
Still, objectifying a disabled person and being unable to tell if they’re animate or inanimate are hallmarks of the uncanny and what makes it ableist. I’ve written many times that Freud, when defining the uncanny, compared disabled people to automata. When defining the uncanny valley in 1970, Masahiro Mori compared disabled people to robots and dead bodies. These modes, models, and definitions are still used. In fact, they permeate the horror genre, even if the filmmakers don’t know where these tropes came from.
This doesn’t mean that disabled people don’t find meaning in Backrooms. I certainly do, and multiple possible reactions and interpretations exist.
As I wrote in my first essay, the Backrooms are terrifying partly because they are inaccessible. When Mary is running from Captain Clark, we can see her clearly judging the distance between each step. This is another thing I do constantly as a disabled person but rarely see on film.
The Backrooms also have opaque rules, like neurotypical social “norms.” That’s why they resonate with many disabled people, including me. Their buzzing fluorescent lights and strange textures would make them inaccessible to many neurodivergent people.
In my previous essay, I mentioned that A24 plans to use generative AI. This is very disappointing. However, Backrooms director Kane Parsons opposes generative AI and says it undermines creativity. The Backrooms contain bizarre architecture and upside-down furniture. Some of it appears to melt into the floor or walls, like a Salvador Dalí painting. This defies physics and may be a commentary on AI slop.
The Backrooms can also represent AI data centers. They are hidden locations, siphoning Clark’s electricity. After Clark moves into his furniture store, he calls an electrician to inspect the circuit breakers. The Backrooms use an unfathomable amount of electricity, causing power outages.
On September 29th, 2026, I wrote on Threads: “I love seeing interpretations of (the) Backrooms using critical theory: Freud, Jung’s collective unconscious, postmodernism, urban decay. Also, we wouldn’t have all this urban decay around to inspire the Backrooms idea if not for capitalism and settler colonialism.”
I loved this video essay from Phil0bot. It analyzes Backrooms using many philosophers and critical theorists: Jameson, Heidegger, Baudrillard, Borges, and more. People will probably keep applying different critical theory lenses to this movie for years.
