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u/LodgeBeing_No_9
r/BabyReindeerTVSeries r/obsessionmovie r/theories r/listentothis r/u_LodgeBeing_No_9 r/FilmTheorists r/discussingfilm r/BritishTV r/A24 r/davidlynchmemes r/AeonFlux_ r/FilmsExplained r/okfreakynikki r/hbo r/backroomsmovie r/davidlynch r/HalfManTV r/Music r/backroomsfilm r/backrooms
Obsession Decoded - Are the One Wish Willows actually real?
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 12 days ago
Obsession director Curry Barker reveals the important scene he cut from the movie
Curry Barker interviewed by Collider - Full video here.
This video is the director revealing a scene he cut from the finished movie which supports the theory that Bear is casually abusing drugs. Had it been left in the film we may have gotten more insight into Bear's private life before the movie.
See also
Ian. The 'secret' villain of Obsession
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 16 days ago
The Directors Series - Stylistic Inspiration for The Backrooms?
EDIT - ALL IMAGES DELETED? SERIOUSLY ?
These boxsets became available in the early 2000s from 90s music video directors.
See also
The Backrooms and the work of director Michael Gondry
The Backrooms and Peter Chung's surreal animated show 'Aeon Flux'
And we know why the mods of Backrooms keep removing posts about this.
They'd rather you weren't aware of the work of these talented directors
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 25 days ago
The Backrooms and Peter Chung's surreal animated show 'Aeon Flux' (1991-1995)
A series of stills from MTVs Aeon Flux and Kane Pixels' The Backrooms
Thanks for looking.
See also - The Backrooms and the work of director Michael Gondry
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 1 month ago
▲ 200 r/backrooms
The Backrooms and the work of director Michael Gondry
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 1 month ago
Is the core retro horror of The Backrooms a 'misremembered feelings' shout out to 90's alternative music video aesthetics of Chris Cunningham, Spike Jonze and Michael Gondry (among many others)?
'Virtual Insanity' directed by Jonathan Glazer
Bjork, 1997 'Bachelorette' by Michel Gondry
The emotional core of Backrooms horror (uncanny nostalgia, distorted familiarity, half-remembered dread) does overlap with the surreal, dream-logic, and often unsettling aesthetics of 90s alternative music videos by those directors (and masters like David Lynch and peers like Mark Romanek).
Gondry's 'Everlong' music video
- Michel Gondry excels at tactile, inventive, memory-warped surrealism (Björk videos, The Foo Fighter's 'Everlong' music video, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). His work often feels like "misremembered feelings" dream logic applied to everyday objects and spaces, where reality bends in ways that feel intimately wrong or nostalgically off. Liminal horror operates on similar ground: spaces that trigger vague childhood/office/school memories but twist them into existential unease.
Gondry's 'Let Forever Be' video
- Chris Cunningham (especially Aphex Twin videos like "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker") brings grotesque, uncanny distortions of the mundane (distorted faces in grim or sterile settings, glitchy analog unease, horror in the ordinary. This is closer to the "retro horror" vibe in a lot of Backrooms fan content (VHS filters, low-fi 3D renders, empty institutional spaces).
- Spike Jonze leans more playful/narrative but shares the experimental, reality-bending spirit (often with Charlie Kaufman), turning familiar environments surreal.
Being John Malkovich by Spike Jonze
'Bachelorette' - Michel Gondry
These directors helped popularize a late-90s/early-2000s visual language of surreal takes on the everyday/corporate/institutional, practical effects, filmic grain, and emotional ambiguity, turning the familiar into something dreamlike or nightmarish.
Gondry's ghostly 'Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground' video
Walken in 'Weapon of Choice' video by Jonze
There are indirect bridges through elements Kane did draw from:
- Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada are explicitly cited for the Backrooms score/atmosphere.
- Boards of Canada in particular is frequently linked by fans to liminal spaces because of its hauntological, warped nostalgia ("memories that aren't yours," childhood media distortion, eerie analog warmth gone slightly sour). Many people say their music feels like liminal spaces.
Virtual Insanity set without Jay Kay, gives it a more liminal quality.
- Cunningham directed many of Aphex Twin's most iconic (and unsettling) videos, so the sonic influence carries visual DNA from that same scene.
- The broader liminal aesthetic draws from 80s/90s corporate/mall design language, vaporwave-adjacent nostalgia, and electronic music culture which is precisely the world those music videos emerged from and often subverted.
Cunningham's iconic Playstation ad
And those Pentium ads might have been scary for children ....
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 1 month ago
Netflix, Stalking, and a $170 Million Lawsuit | Baby Reindeer | Coldblood & Cocktails
youtu.beu/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 1 month ago
▲ 0 r/HalfManTV
Why is every post on here now whining about Half Man not getting Emmy nominations?
This sub feels full of people who worked on the show who are crashing out now due to the lack of Emmy nominations.
It seems every other post on here is created by accounts directly owned or affiliated with the creatives behind the show. And it's seriously ruined the entire honest discourse of the show on here.
The amount of tantrums happening as a result of this show not being as Emmy nominated as other shows such as The Pitt and Widow's Bay is a bit annoying and smack of entitlement.
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 1 month ago
BABY REINDEER - Fiction Over Truth - Battle With Netflix Over The Real Martha - Richard Gadd Speaks
Does anyone know what is happening with the upcoming Netflix trial in the US? Anyone have an update?
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 1 month ago
Under That Warm Oxy Glow
Has anyone noticed that when Bear is possibly taking Oxycodone it is highlighted by a warm orange glow, like the orange of his pill bottle? This is something you can check out for yourself on your next viewing.
When we see it begin. the movie is in very muted tones at the diner, and then Bear goes home to discover his cat. This warm glow fist appears as Bear is cleaning the floor, possibly after taking another pill to cope. The orange glow bathes the scene.
The scene is the first time we see the glow in full effect.
Later we see him in bed, cold blue tones. Until Nikki calls and we see a little orange glow. It immediately cuts to him in the crystal shop under full orange glow, and then at the bar, while Bear seems happy we are in the glow again.
He is feeling the glow while shopping for crystals
And definitely feeling it in the bar
As Bear is leaving the bar we only see a little light behind him meaning his oxy glow is wearing off. The car journey with Nicky is more in a blue tone. Then later as he takes the One Wish Willow out of his bag we get more of this glow returning.
The orange is fading away and leaving him
When Nikki and Bear go back to his place, rather than break a Willow, did he have another Oxy? Because we are again bathed in orange.
Next day we see the orange glow is less pronounced but still there when Bear goes to work. Again is this the effect of the drug dulling yet still present in him?
In the scene where she later visits him at home he is under the same glow while searching online for symptoms of Molly effects. In his search history for July, which is a few months before the movie, he has searched for Oxycodone.
When Nikki shows up at Bear's place, and they confess they like each other, we see the glow again.
When they go to the restaurant and seem happy together the glow is again present, and remains until later that night.
While Bear is sleeping the glow is gone and he wakes up to find Nikki in the corner. This is followed by a scene next morning where we see him without the orange glow as he looks at himself in, coincidentally, the medicine cabinet mirror.
He notices he's lost some hair in the middle of the night
Then when he emerges he is again in the glow, probably because he has been into the medicine cabinet again.
He emerges from the bathroom under the glow again, and is way more chill.
We see the oxy glow again later when he pulls out the One Wish Willow to call the hotline number. Does the One Wish Willow really exist? Or is it a symbol of Bear's hope and optimism whilst on drugs?
Is this symbolism for Bear being in over his head with his addiction?
When at the Ian's party the glow is back, it is present all through the night when we get back to Bear's place and Nikki does lots of bizarre things.
And later that evening after >!Nikki kills Sarah (or Bear imagines she does)!< he goes to the crystal shop, supposedly covered in blood, and the glow has returned. The shop keeper seems to be oblivious to the fact he's covered in blood. Is any of this part really happening?
I can just see the replies to this right now. "It's called lighting, you fool, they use it in movies, duh" but I'm only asking to consider the orange glow as a deliberate artistic choice to highlight a certain way Bear is feeling during the movie. When you watch again, try to notice the use of colour and see what you think.
Thanks for reading.
For a deeper dive see:
Are Bear and Nikki going through something?
Looking into The Tiger's Eye
There Is No Such Person As 'Wish Nikki'
Is Ian secretly drugging Nikki?
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 2 months ago
Is Ian secretly drugging Nikki?
>!I can already see you instantly reaching for the downvote button with this one, but let's really think about this, and we must also bear in mind the possibilities of the other theories (see below) that ground the events of Obsession in terrifying reality and could happen with anyone.!<
>!Was Ian using opportunities to secretly drug Nikki, each time coinciding with her most extreme behaviour? On top of the anxiety she has of her secret being found out by Bear, is Ian also making things worse behind the scenes? Let's examine some evidence.!<
Ian sits with Nikki during quiz night drinks
>!The quiz night is a possible time where Ian could have slipped something in her drink. He may have thought he was taking her home that night. Remember Bear's offer to take her home is a last minute thing. She acts strange from the car journey onwards, and later we find she's taken Bear's cat out of the trash. She says she may have taken something.!<
Ian's drugs kick in that night
>!Next day Bear tells Ian who is convinced her behaviour is due to drugs, and Ian says that it would be wrong for Bear to have done anything when she was 'fucked up'. He says 'I bet she's been on molly again' and tells Bear to go clock in. We then see Ian checking on Nikki while Bear is clocking in. He then later takes her home in his car. Did they go to Nikki's or Ian's place? Remember Ian and Bear are neighbours (the reason why Bear gives him a lift home later in the movie)!<
>!Does he drug her again at his place? She shows up at Bear's later in a confused state after having a shower (at Ians?). This night they get together and all is well for a while. We don't know the exact time that passes but we see they are happy together until, one night, Ian calls Bear while they're out eating. !<
>!On this call he puts doubt into Bear about Nikki's father really being sick. He then asks Bear not to involve Sarah with this, and that Sarah had also talked to Nikki and she told her that Bear was like a brother to her. !<
>!Ian sowing seeds of doubt in Bear is what sours the evening and upsets an already fragile Nikki. The extreme anxiety keeps her awake at night and leads to her screaming episode in the corner of the room. She will eventually be found out and it's eating away at her.!<
Ian is constantly calling, making Nikki uneasy
>!The next time he drugs her is at his party, where she exhibits some extreme behaviour, to reinforce to Bear that she is a psycho not to be trusted. By now Ian is both jealous of Bear and obsessed with Nikki. He is using Bear's addiction to Oxycodone to manipulate his thinking. She couldn't be in love with Bear, Ian reasons, she is just fucked from the drugs and Bear is the one taking advantage. He tries hard to prove the love isn't real.!<
>!Before Nikki hurts herself she reads out a story to the party goers. This story is about Hansel and Gretel, brother and sister. Read into it what you will. She then declares her love for Bear, and looks dead on in Ian's direction, as if to mean this message was mainly for him.!<
>!Is the real obsession Ian's?!<
Read also...
Under That Warm Oxy Glow
There Is No Such Person As 'Wish Nikki'
Looking into The Tiger's Eye
Are Bear and Nikki going through something?
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 2 months ago
Under That Warm Oxy Glow
Has anyone noticed that when Bear is possibly taking Oxycodone it is highlighted by a warm orange glow, like the orange of his pill bottle? This is something you can check out for yourself on your next viewing.
When we see it begin. the movie is in very muted tones at the diner, and then Bear goes home to discover his cat. This warm glow fist appears as Bear is cleaning the floor, possibly after taking another pill to cope. The orange glow bathes the scene.
The scene is the first time we see the glow in full effect.
Later we see him in bed, cold blue tones. Until Nikki calls and we see a little orange glow. It immediately cuts to him in the crystal shop under full orange glow, and then at the bar, while Bear seems happy we are in the glow again.
He is feeling the glow while shopping for crystals
And definitely feeling it in the bar
As Bear is leaving the bar we only see a little light behind him meaning his oxy glow is wearing off. The car journey with Nicky is more in a blue tone. Then later as he takes the One Wish Willow out of his bag we get more of this glow returning.
The orange is fading away and leaving him
When Nikki and Bear go back to his place, rather than break a Willow, did he have another Oxy? Because we are again bathed in orange.
Next day we see the orange glow is less pronounced but still there when Bear goes to work. Again is this the effect of the drug dulling yet still present in him?
In the scene where she later visits him at home he is under the same glow while searching online for symptoms of Molly effects. In his search history for July, which is a few months before the movie, he has searched for Oxycodone.
When Nikki shows up at Bear's place, and they confess they like each other, we see the glow again.
When they go to the restaurant and seem happy together the glow is again present, and remains until later that night.
While Bear is sleeping the glow is gone and he wakes up to find Nikki in the corner. This is followed by a scene next morning where we see him without the orange glow as he looks at himself in, coincidentally, the medicine cabinet mirror.
He notices he's lost some hair in the middle of the night
Then when he emerges he is again in the glow, probably because he has been into the medicine cabinet again.
He emerges from the bathroom under the glow again, and is way more chill.
We see the oxy glow again later when he pulls out the One Wish Willow to call the hotline number. Does the One Wish Willow really exist? Or is it a symbol of Bear's hope and optimism whilst on drugs?
Is this symbolism for Bear being in over his head with his addiction?
When at the Ian's party the glow is back, it is present all through the night when we get back to Bear's place and Nikki does lots of bizarre things.
And later that evening after >!Nikki kills Sarah (or Bear imagines she does)!< he goes to the crystal shop, supposedly covered in blood, and the glow has returned. The shop keeper seems to be oblivious to the fact he's covered in blood. Is any of this part really happening?
I can just see the replies to this right now. "It's called lighting, you fool, they use it in movies, duh" but I'm only asking to consider the orange glow as a deliberate artistic choice to highlight a certain way Bear is feeling during the movie. When you watch again, try to notice the use of colour and see what you think.
Thanks for reading.
For a deeper dive see:
Are Bear and Nikki going through something?
Looking into The Tiger's Eye
There Is No Such Person As 'Wish Nikki'
Is Ian secretly drugging Nikki?
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 16 days ago
Are Henry & His Wife both In Wild at Heart?
Henry & Mary X in Wild at Heart
We know Henry (Jack Nance) is in Wild at Heart, but is his wife Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) in it too?
I know it's highly unlikely and just an editing continuity error, but she seems to appear briefly when Sailor sings to Lula looking almost lost and bewildered.
She stares at Sailor the whole time she is on screen, looking almost in a trance
And then it cuts away to Sailor and cuts back and she is gone from the center of the frame.
It then cuts to a wider angle and she is completely missing from the crowd scene she was just centered in.
I was just wondering if it was maybe a little in joke from Lynch. A blt of in-universe humor. Like this much debated cameo appearance.
Some believe that this is a cameo from Laura Palmer and Ronette Polanski
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 2 months ago
Half Man review – Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer follow-up is a brutal, pointless misfire
Read review here - 2 stars out of 5
Gadd and Jamie Bell co-star as extremely dysfunctional stepbrothers in Gadd’s new BBC drama, which has some of the most unlikeable characters on TV
I’m sure you’ve heard of star-crossed lovers – two people who are bound together by the same perverse fate that will ultimately keep them apart – but what about star-crossed brothers? “My brother from another lover” is the refrain in Richard Gadd’s new six-part BBC series, Half Man, where sex and violence, love and hate, good and evil have all been etched, irrevocably, in the cosmos.
“What can I say about Niall Kennedy?” a voice booms out at a wedding. It belongs to Ruben (Richard Gadd), a bearded biker who has burst into the ceremony, his leathers creaking like a stretched belt. Niall (Jamie Bell) is his makeshift stepbrother, the son of his mother’s former partner. They grew up together – Niall a nervous boy struggling with his sexuality, Ruben a force of pure delinquent charisma – before an act of violence wrenched them asunder.
As they become adults, they drift apart, are pulled back together, and then combust all over again. “You’re very different,” flatmate Celeste (Philippine Velge) observes when the brothers arrive at university. “It’s like one needs a head and the other needs a body.” But rather than combining to make one fully functioning person, they instead reach new levels of dysfunctionality.
As a writer, director and actor, Gadd has been in high demand ever since his breakout Netflix drama, Baby Reindeer, fictionalised his own struggles with a stalker. That show was based on his personal experiences, which he stress-tested in an acclaimed Edinburgh stage show and then successfully translated to the screen (though a messy fall-out followed).
It’s not easy to follow such an intensely personal project. Do you try to repeat the formula, drawing again from your personal life, and run the risk of confining your pony to a single trick? Or do you push back against your breakthrough and do something completely different? With Half Man – produced for the BBC in collaboration with HBO, the world’s most prestigious broadcaster – Gadd appears caught in two minds. It feels like a show in search of meaning, a plot looking for a story – and frankly, it’s a huge misfire.
Part of the issue is the sheer unlikeability of the central characters. Both Ruben and Niall – portrayed as teenagers by Stuart Campbell and Mitchell Robertson – are presented as deeply flawed men, the architects of their own misery. Ruben “has blackness in him”, a tendency that draws him to violence and abuse, while Niall is a slippery coward, skulking behind the dark glamour of his stepbrother.
But the show fails to extract much sympathy for the pair – particularly Ruben, whose whirlwind of malevolence involves him repeatedly exacting brutal, near fatal, violence on innocent parties. Even the supporting cast are hard to root for: Ruben’s wife Mona (Amy Manson) is selfish, while Niall’s mum Lori (Neve McIntosh) strains credibility as his straight-shooting protector. “One of the most lethal acts of self-harm you can commit,” she tells her aspiring author son, “is convincing yourself you’re worthy of a higher purpose.” Top parenting.
There’s a world in which this nastiness might serve a point. After all, Gadd’s self-portrait in Baby Reindeer was unflinching. His performance highlighted his own mendacity and the cyclical nature of abuse (a theme that is revisited here). But there was genuine pathos, too, eliciting sympathy for both victim and perpetrator.
The purpose of Half Man is less clear. Cartoonishly exaggerated characters knock chunks out of each other, speaking in overwritten soundbites (“You may be the painter, Niall, but I’m the rolling hills!”) in service of a plot that rambles over the course of multiple decades. It has the feeling of a dark, misanthropic novel – the sort of thing Martin Amis would’ve written, to great acclaim, in the Eighties – but struggles as a six-hour entertainment piece.
Bell acts his socks off – while Gadd appears to have written himself a character with limitless sexual charisma, who is largely shirtless – but the show just feels pointless. And maybe there is a streak of nihilism in Half Man. Neither Niall nor Ruben can escape their childhood, the things they’ve expressed or the things they’ve hidden. Nothing, it seems, can happen to change their doom-laden trajectory. It was, after all, written in the stars.
But even if that charitable interpretation exists, it’s hard to escape the nagging suspicion that Gadd’s sophomore programme is a calculated attempt to make something brave and startling and important, and all the other adjectives that were applied, more authentically, to Baby Reindeer.
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 2 months ago
‘Pure, unyielding torture pornography’: is Half Man too unpleasant to be good TV?
"It is so swamped by its supposedly big, important themes that it keeps forgetting about emotional subtlety. At its worst, it feels as if it was made by a 14-year-old emo acting out to get noticed."
u/Glass-News-9184 — 3 months ago
▲ 0 r/HalfManTV
Richard Gadd still ‘proud’ of Baby Reindeer despite Netflix lawsuit
Is it right to be proud of BR in light of this video
It's kind of a Rubin moce to pull something like this, so is Richard Gadd drawing from real life again?
The hospital scene dialogue felt very much aimed at someone who isn't happy with his success. How they can't stand to see him do well.
I have a weird feeling he lurks on the forums about him or his shows and resents any criticism he gets. Just a theory
u/LodgeBeing_No_9 — 3 months ago