Backrooms

Our 2026 Summer Blockbusters tour takes a deeply unsettling, mind-bending turn this week on We Drink & We Watch Things. We are trading the bloody arena fights of Mortal Kombat II for the quiet, endless, fluorescent-lit nightmare of Kane Parsons’ feature directorial debut, Backrooms. Distributed by A24, this psychological horror transforms a viral internet phenomenon into a genuinely terrifying study of grief, memory, and architecture gone completely wrong. To help suppress the existential dread of being trapped in a parallel universe, Lemar has given us our cocktail of the week - The Captain & Clark - a pale, yellow rum cocktail you'll want to sip on. It is crisp, a little bitter, and the perfect drink for when you feel like you are losing your grip on reality. This week, we unpack the incredible performances of Chiwetel Ejiofor as Clark, the struggling furniture store owner who stumbles into a gateway in his basement, and Renate Reinsve as Mary, his therapist who gets pulled into the labyrinth with him. We dissect how the film captures the deeply creepy aesthetic of "liminal spaces" - those beige corridors, dead malls, and glitching, digital sandbox environments that feel completely empty yet intensely hostile. We also talk through the film's hidden layers, examining how these infinite yellow rooms function as a physical manifestation of Clark and Mary's unresolved trauma, and why Mark Duplass's character adds the perfect amount of unsettling gravitas to the lore. If you are a fan of the original YouTube shorts, or if you just love a horror film that trades cheap jump-scares for absolute psychological claustrophobia, this is an episode you cannot miss. We are blending our fascination with this new wave of internet-born cinema with our usual casual banter, proving that the only thing scarier than being entirely alone is the sinking feeling that you aren't. This episode VIDEO is live on YouTube AND Spotify! Follow us on Instagram to get ep sneak peaks and find out what's coming up. DM us what you want to hear about next! Interested in what we're watching off the pod? Check out Mackenzie or Lemar's Letterboxd!