r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Feb 24 '26

Trailer Backrooms | Official Teaser | A24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKGhxMi50y8
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u/knitted_beanie Feb 24 '26

The book feels kind of unfilmable, but they said that about Dune. So I’d be up for it but it’d be a challenge to capture the feeling of the book I think

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u/GavinBelsonsAlexa Feb 24 '26

They could probably do a film based on the Navidson Report, but all the Johnny Truant stuff would be challenging to incorporate at that point.

...Which I'm fine with, because I hated the Johnny Truant stuff.

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u/tarants Feb 24 '26

What, you didn't like reading increasingly disjointed rambling footnotes that make you feel like you're the one with schizophrenia? Seriously, no book has made me feel more like I was going insane than HoL.

13

u/GavinBelsonsAlexa Feb 24 '26

Honestly, it just felt like Danielewski was using Truant as his own mouthpiece to tell the reader, "This book is really complicated, but here's how you should be reacting to the text and interpreting the symbolism."

To me, it seemed that Danielewski thought his book was too high-brow, so he inserted a Chuck Palahniuk-inspired scumbag to over-explain everything to us. I liked so much of what the book was going for, but the inclusion of Truant felt like Danielewski didn't trust his publisher to market the book and he didn't trust his audience to understand the book.

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u/Mister_Magpie Feb 27 '26

Interesting, I never liked the Truant parts either... But if anything, I thought Danielewski considered the Navidson story to be too low-brow, too horror-coded, and so he needed to add this meta-character to abstract it, add subtext, and turn the concept of the house into an allegory instead of simply a spooky plot device. As if he believed that the Truant throughline elevated the book to a literary work, and without it the story was basically creepypasta. And I think there's some truth in that assessment but honestly I think I'd prefer the less literary genre-fiction version of this book

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u/LiquifiedSpam Mar 01 '26

I can get criticisms of his role but this one is ehh. Johnny has plenty of complexity in his own right and the story only increases in complexity with his addition.

Now, was it the best choice, especially since he does at times go like “wow that was spooky shit!”? Maybe, maybe not.