u/zombiewithinsomnia

I'm sorry but if you only talk about yourself and convey no enthusiasm to share a connection or learn more about the other person, you need to have better social skills😭One person should not be asking all the questions. I'm surprised more people do not know this.

For context, using Bumble BFF and the amount of guys who will strike a conversation just to talk about themselves is crazy...

The title says it all. A few days ago, I came across this post with the original first draft allegedly written by Will Soodik in 2024 of the Backrooms’ film script. Out of curiosity, I decided to give it a read and took notes of some the key changes to the film’s writing and story. It’s a pretty lengthy list as the final product of the film cuts out a lot of some unnecessary beats. Still, I thought it was pretty neat to see what made the chopping block. 

Overall, the script is pretty mediocre at best with a seemingly lackluster understanding of how the Backrooms work. Pirate Clark is replaced by the Lifeform which is just as generic as any film’s monster villain. Clark remains the same for the most part, but Mary’s backstory takes a huge nosedive with an even more generic storyline with her older sister. ASYNC does play a bit of a stronger role here, but it ultimately doesn’t answer many questions anyway. 

You can read the full script here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YVAMWRDR6hgEzycn3rpPetGLoa4pSjIi/view 

First Act

• The opening scene is much more cliché and follows James Kittredge, a pale, bearded man in his late 30s. His role in the story is essentially the same as Naren's at the beginning of the film, but the camera follows him normally rather than through the first-person POV shots we got. At one point, he even removes his hazmat mask, revealing his face. The film begins with James placing a long row of M&M's on the carpeted floor, tracking his path only to later loop back to where he started. This version of the script has a not-so-subtle theme centered around "coming full circle" and loops (p. 5). James crawls through a crevice with a small door featuring three doorknobs, like the one in the throne room. He climbs through, breaks his back in the fall, and is chased and killed offscreen by the lifeform (p. 6).
• We immediately cut to Clark's commercial where his throne breaks. The rest of the script plays out very similarly, with little to no variation in the dialogue: the therapy session with Mary, visiting Bobby and Kat's apartment, the cowboy salesman commercial, etc.
• The newest scene, which we never saw in the film, is an interview Phil gives to a reporter in the parking lot outside the ASYNC building (p. 13). He acknowledges James as a hardworking member of ASYNC and says they "won't rest until he's back where he belongs, at home and at work." This is one of the reasons I think the script is very likely real, as we saw a deleted scene photo of Phil in a parking lot on set. Someone could have seen that post and reworked it into this script after seeing the movie, but I think there's a high chance the scene was actually filmed as written.
• During the scene where Clark is sketching a map at the front desk next to Kat, the script includes a moment where they're approached by a customer curious about a chair with an incongruous fifth leg. He says he found it downstairs and tries to bargain for a discount. Clark humorously slips into salesman mode, spilling some jargon about its quality wood before offering to sell it for fifty bucks (p. 23). Besides the breaker scene, this is the script's first attempt at signaling that the Backrooms are "merging" with the real world.
• When Clark enters the Backrooms, things play out quite differently. He explores for a bit and finds a check with writing that looks foreign (p. 27). He also finds James' ID and puts both in his pocket.
• After opening a door, he enters a CANDY STORE. Clark eats a handful of jelly beans before finding fresh red spray paint on a wall reading: "3 BIRDS, 7 SECONDS" (p. 28). He then hears the voice of a little girl whose only lines are: "Have you seen my daddy? I can't find him. Where's my daddy?" Freaked out, he runs back toward the entrance. The lights flicker on and off as the Lifeform approaches through the darkness, but he escapes in time.
• Clark's final therapy session with Mary is mostly the same, though there's a stronger implication that Mary wants to 5051 Clark. She picks up the phone but ultimately chooses to put it back down (p. 36).
• When Kat and Bobby enter the Backrooms, the laundry room doesn't exist, and the scene unfolds differently, with Bobby abseiling down the long hallway. The way it's written is a little confusing, but the twist is that the hallway isn't linear. It loops back to Clark and Kat, with Bobby facing their backs. The Lifeform attacks him in very typical horror fashion, repeatedly slamming his body against the ceiling and floor before dragging him away (p. 44–45). Unlike the film, the script doesn't imply that Clark acted maliciously or had any ill intent.
• The scene that follows is also quite different. Clark ends up in a circular room filled with doors. He chooses one at random and enters an area described as "an uncanny rendition of an old Marshall Field's" (p. 47). This makes me wonder if they drew inspiration from its architecture for Mary's stair scene. Here, Clark encounters the little girl again, along with a red-haired woman, both revealed to have the same distorted faces we saw elsewhere. They don't interact much: the woman appears behind the girl, the lights go out, and when they come back on she's suddenly standing in front of Clark, smiling. He runs away and nearly bumps into the little girl, who is now behind him. This part felt the most like the AHS episode, just vibes without literally any substance. Clark then falls through the floor into a pool, except "the water [is] replaced by undulating waves of fabric" (p. 49).
• The rest of the scene plays out mostly the same, but there's some dialogue between Clark and Kat that I actually really liked. Standing on the other side of the "glass" wall, Clark asks Kat to prove she's really Kat. She tells him she knows he's been sleeping in the store ever since Barbara kicked him out, and that she sometimes arrives for her shift but has to wait in her car for him to wake up (p. 49). It wouldn't have worked in the more urgent version we got in the film, but I really liked this line for Kat.
• Bobby's camera is running very low on battery, with a blinking red indicator in the corner. While reading the script, I thought it added some nice tension, as the camera dies just after it's picked up to film Clark at the "glass" wall. At the same time, I can also see how it might have come across as amateurish or distracting.

Second Act

• Mary's half is very different. We jump back to the 1970s with a young Mary and her older sister, Julie (p. 51). In the middle of the night, they sneak into a rich old man's house using the credit card trick. Before they can do anything, however, he wakes up and grabs Julie. Young Mary tries to reach her sister but falls through the stairs, only to hear a loud shotgun blast. It really is as vague as it sounds, and it's far weaker than the storyline we got with her mom.
• Back in the present, Mary and Phil are actually married. He comforts her after she wakes up from her nightmare. She expresses guilt and wishes she had done something different that night (p. 53).
• Mary's book party is replaced with a work party. She overhears Phil and two ASYNC employees discussing something about the tape viewings (p. 55). Mary later comforts James' wife, Nancy, by the pool. She tries to cheer her up, but Nancy is convinced her husband is dead. Mary confides that the grief never really ends. Needing a breather, she heads to the bathroom to take a Xanax (p. 59).
• When Mary visits Clark's store, she finds James' ID and Clark's map. She takes both with her and discovers the null zone. She slowly reaches her hand toward the gap in the wall, but, thinking it's just the darkness playing tricks on her eyes, decides at the very last second not to enter and leaves instead (p. 62). This part gagged me.
• Mary drives to the ASYNC building and sneaks into Phil's office, where she finds a blueprint for a complex titled Project KV31. It matches Clark's map perfectly (p. 65). Later, she confronts Phil about the blueprint over dinner, but he brushes it off with enough jargon to make it sound uninteresting, calling it “a glorified storage unit.” Mary apologizes for overstepping (p. 69).
• That night, Mary dreams about the incident with Julie again. This time, they're on the upper floor of the old man's house, hiding under a bed. The old man drags Julie out from underneath and shoots her with a shotgun while young Mary watches from beneath the bed (p. 72).
• Mary wakes up from this nightmare flashback and heads downstairs, where she overhears Phil speaking with an ASYNC employee. They're both worried that Mary will discover the project (p. 73). In true cliché movie fashion, Mary accidentally knocks over a glass, then bolts out of the house and into her car while Phil chases after her. She ends up at Clark's furniture store.
• Mary enters the Backrooms and explores the candy store inside. She finds Clark there, and the same scene plays out with him putting her in a chokehold (p. 77).

Third Act

• We get glimpses of Mary slipping in and out of consciousness as she's dragged by Clark. One cool scene that I do wish we got has Mary being dragged through a suburban street lined with yellow houses and white picket fences. When she looks up, "the ceiling's painted sky blue. A large drawing of a cartoon sun looms over the houses—a child's rendition, with a crooked smile and squiggly lines to indicate heat" (p. 78). She then wakes up at the dinner table just like in the movie. Instead, Archibald is replaced by the little girl and her fuckass umbrella. The rest of the scene plays out the same.
• Clark refers to the brain as a forest, reinforcing the script's "coming full circle" theme: "The forest always tells us where to go. We're born on a path and we die on that path, and the only thing we can do is follow it around in itty bitty circles until we finally drop dead." (p. 80)
• The little girl starts asking the same questions again, and Clark literally tells her to shut the fuck up and calls her an orphan. She just giggles and goes back to twirling her umbrella. Sigh. (p. 81)
• Clark pulls out a gun, telling Mary, "There's a gun store just down the hall. Gotta be careful, though: if the walls start breathing, you've gone too far." (p. 83)
• Clark opens the fridge door, revealing THE HALF-EATEN BODY OF KAT. (p. 83)
• The Lifeform attacks both the little girl and Clark before chasing Mary out into the streets. This sequence is completely different from the movie. Mary runs into an abandoned airplane and rushes into the cockpit (p. 90). The Lifeform has a real Xenomorph vibe to it, with long black tentacles that literally “slithers up her leg, slow and curious.” Anyway...
• Mary manages to climb out of the plane and into the woods. Believing she's finally escaped back into the real world, she heads toward the ASYNC building in the distance (p. 92). Along the way, she watches three birds fly overhead, then quickly realizes they respawn every seven seconds. This is what finally signals to her that she never actually left the Backrooms.
• The Lifeform continues chasing Mary into the ASYNC building. She descends floor after floor, and the stairwell slowly transitions into yellow walls and beige carpet. This immediately reminded me of the edit scene we got in the film (p. 93). 
• Mary runs into several ASYNC workers in hazmat suits. One of them is Phil, who hugs her before injecting her with the sleepy serum. She passes out and later wakes up in a cell across from James who is alive and held captive by ASYNC (p. 96). 
• Outside the window, she sees a flock of three birds. She counts down from seven, and the film cuts to black (p. 97).

It was definitely an interesting read, and I was surprised by what made the final cut and what didn't. There are a few beats I wish had stayed, but overall, I think Kane did a great job trimming the script down and shaping it into a much more concise, focused story. In this earlier version, a lot of the material leans into clichés and familiar horror tropes. My biggest issue is Mary's backstory with her sister Julie, which doesn't really add anything meaningful to her character and feels fairly surface-level. Likewise, making Mary Phil's wife feels a little too convenient, and that plot point comes across as overly Hollywoodized. The design of the Backrooms itself feels very wishywashy as it graduates from biomes to completely separate areas (ie. candy store). I know this is just the script, but at times, it felt extremely surface level, and the writing felt arbitrary at times. 

In the end, I think the finished film salvages most of the script's strongest ideas while stripping away the not so meaningful ones. It really shows that the "less is more" approach worked in the film's favor, allowing the atmosphere and the characters to speak for themselves instead of forcing every scene to mean something dramatic. Reworking Mary's trauma to center on her schizophrenic mother is also a much stronger thematic choice with the Backrooms, tying directly into the ideas the film is ultimately trying to explore.