One of my favorite books of all time is the French book Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. (You know, the movie with Michelle Pfieffer, John Malkovich, and Glen Close? Oh and Keanu Reeves as well! I totally forgot that he was in that too!) Really interesting connection you picked up there Ellwa. Thanks for the snag!

Dude, I could not possibly agree with you any more. I seriously considered doing a post just in this vein alone. Did you see that Obsession has increased in Box Office numbers each subsequent week for three straight weeks? I think E.T. was the last movie to pull a feat off like that. And I think with a budget of $750,000, it will easily be considered one of the highest grossing ROI’s of all time (up there with films like Paranormal Activity and My Big Fat Greek Wedding).

But what I love most about Backrooms specifically (personally loved Obsession, but it was very much standard horror film tropes and patterns) is the Lore, the mythos, and the characters that the movie brought to the table. Clark and Mary were fantastically well crafted and fleshed out characters. And their experience in the backrooms were a reflection of their lives and experiences etc. Just so brilliantly well done.

Anyway – I’m going on and on and on just to say that I totally agree with you. I am hopeful that Hollywood will start listening to new and younger faces with fresh/strange/interesting ideas. Hollywood prefers to just work the standard algorithms until they die. But these movies are saying that oil is in a totally different field entirely.

Now answer me back: How can this book be related to Old?”

It’s relevant because later Prisca admitted to Maddox (her daughter) she’d been having an affair, and later still, Guy (her husband) admitted to her he already knew about it. The book title was the foreshadowing of that detail.

Probable! Hahahah. Thats a real possibility!!

I always took that scene to mean the calls were coming from the bartender’s accomplice — or possibly from someone connected to the murders he was covering up. The whole point of him lying about the phone being dead was to isolate Steve and control the situation inside the bar.
The movie never gives a completely explicit answer about who was on the other end, which is part of what makes The Oak Room so tense and unsettling. But the implication is that the bartender absolutely knew the calls mattered and didn’t want Steve answering them because it could expose what was really going on.