You know, for a time, I really wanted to watch Obsession, but I kept putting it off, and you'll never guess the reason why: It's because I was too scared to watch it. However, one of my students, who is TWELVE, saw the movie and she said to me, “I think you can handle it, Mr. Knight.” After that, I just had to put on my big boy pants and watch it. I didn't find it scary at all. In fact, I found it funny!
Which made me wonder something: Am I just too old to be scared by stories concerning young people? Enter Backrooms, which is actually a story concerning mature characters. Though I didn't find it scary, I did find it way more compelling than Obsession. Here's why.
I Can Actually Relate To The Decision-Making Of The Characters In This Film
I've seen most of the best horror movies of all time. While I do appreciate franchise horror films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Child's Play, I find that in my older years (I'm in my 40s), I tend to come back to movies like The Shining, The Conjuring, and the later Halloween movies like Halloween: Resurrection, where Jamie Lee Curtis is a mature adult.
It has made me realize something: Perhaps I've just aged out of the kind of horror that concerns young people. When I watch those kinds of films, I can't see myself in the situations these young people find themselves in, so I'm no longer scared by them. Backrooms is different in that it features two lead characters played by mature actors. One of them is Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is in charge of a rundown furniture store. Clark is going through a divorce and is seeing a therapist.
Clark is depressed and basically living in the past. I can relate. So, when he finds a strange portal in his department store, I can understand his desire to explore it. This is something new for him. It's something strange. Something so outside his realm of understanding that I get his compulsion to want to explore it. For the first time in a long time, he finally feels excited about something again.
The other character is Clark's therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve). She also finds herself in the Backrooms and seems to be constantly reliving traumatic moments from her childhood. I also understand her desire to find some kind of closure, even in her adulthood. It all just makes me feel even closer to these characters, given their life experiences.
Backrooms Is Proof That Older People Can Make For Good Horror Protagonists
I also love The Others starring Nicole Kidman, and not just because of its shocking ending. When I first watched it in 2001, I was 18. Back then, I couldn't relate to the main protagonist as she was a middle-aged mother. Now that I'm actually thinking more about my own mortality (and I’m a middle-aged dad), I find myself really understanding her character much more these days.
Backrooms is further proof that older people can make for great horror protagonists. That's because older people have different fears than younger people. Having an existential crisis like Clark is a lot more relatable to me than having a woman being obsessed with me (which never happened in my entire life, but you know, whatever).
So, as an older person myself, when I look at the upcoming slate of horror movies, I'm going to consider who the story centers around. If the main character is in their 20s, then I might just wait for it to come to streaming. However, if the protagonist is in their late 30s or even their 40s or 50s, then I'll seriously consider seeing it in theaters. We old folks gotta stick together, you know.
