All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)

Gregory J. Smalley founded 366 Weird Movies in 2008 and has served as editor-in-chief since that time. He is a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and his film writing has appeared online in Pop Matters and The Spool.
Capsules, Essays

REPORT: BACKROOMS: EVERYTHING MUST GO EDITION (2026) REVEALS TENSION IN THE FRANCHISE

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Backrooms  is available to purchase or rent on-demand (without the “Everything Must Go” bonus content).

In 2019, A24 briefly released an extended director’s cut of the unexpected horror hit Midsommar to theaters between its regular run and its home video debut. This year, the even more surprising success of the YouTube “liminal horror” adaptation Backrooms—which has, shockingly, become the studio’s highest grossing film of all time—inspired them to take a similar marketing tack. This time around, however, the offering was not a true extended cut, but rather the original theatrical release with a 15-minute bonus short set in the Backrooms universe playing after the credits rolled. In the theater I saw it in, less than half the audience stayed for the bonus film (presumably because they didn’t know it was coming—without researching it, you would not expect the extra content).

backrooms everything must go edition (2026) promotional stillYou likely missed Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition in its one-week theatrical run (which is already over). The good news is that, although there was originally some question as to whether this short would be a theatrical exclusive, we now know that it will (soon) appear on director Kane Parsons’ YouTube channel. The other good news for those with Backrooms FOMO is that “Everything Must Go” is as inessential as inessential can be: it chronologically and temporally links the web series to the feature film, but it offers little excitement on its own.

The “Everything Must Go” edition exists only because of Backrooms’ strange journey to theaters. To recap quickly for those out of the loop: it began as a “creepypasta” digital legend about a man who discovers an endless labyrinth of rooms. Other users picked up the story and elaborated on it—most notably, a 16-year old named , whose original liminal space found-footage “Backrooms” YouTube short picked up 90 million views (and a Weirdcademy Award) before being further expanded into a 24-episode webseries. The series eventually centered around the corporation ASYNC’s exploration of the Backrooms—an endless series of rooms with improbable geometries, surreally anomalous items, and dimly glimpsed monstrous entities. In yet another surprise in this constantly astonishing phenomenon, in 2023 art-house/elevated horror studio A24, fresh off a best picture nomination for Everything Everywhere All at Once, announced that they would sign then 17-year-old Parsons to direct a Backrooms feature film, with the backing of ‘s Atomic Monster productions. Again defying the odds, the Backrooms feature film was a blockbuster.

And thus we come to the present. The purpose of the “Everything Must Go” edition—besides the obvious cash grab—is, as noted, to Continue reading REPORT: BACKROOMS: EVERYTHING MUST GO EDITION (2026) REVEALS TENSION IN THE FRANCHISE →

Capsules

CAPSULE: TOUCH ME (2025)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Olivia Taylor Dudley, Jordan Gavaris, , Marlene Forte

PLOT: 27-year old underachiever Joey and her troubled trust-fund baby pal Craig spend time at the retreat of an alien, becoming addicted to the heroin-like touch of his tentacles.

Still from Touch Me (2025)

COMMENTS: I don’t think Gen-Z’ers are really afraid of, or attracted to, alien tentacle sex. What the characters in Touch Me are deeply afraid of is a life devoid of purpose, or even of a reasonable infrastructure to be able to pursue their dreams. Joey is unable to advance her journalistic career, a slave to student debt and just-over-minimum-wage barrista and bartender gigs. Craig’s privileged background and philosophy degree put him no closer to finding dreams; in fact, they’ve left him depressed and unemployable. Meaningless sex, drinking, New Age-y spiritual exercises, and, eventually, the blissful, numbing touch only an alien can deliver offer them relief from their anxieties. Heck, even procrastinating alien Brian can’t get his act together to either take over the world, or to save it from itself. As the characters struggle to find a place in society, the alien’s euphoric touch serves a metaphor for the distractions and temptations of co-dependent romantic relationships and, more explicitly, drug addiction.

The acting is remarkable for a low-budget indie horror. Olivia Taylor Dudley is a revelation: dreamy in a languid, damaged way, remaining likable even when engaging in vile drug-seeking behaviors. She begins the film with an 8-minute monologue about her first meeting with a track-suited, environmentally responsible alien with hair that’s the “good kind of wet.” It’s not quite a tour-de-force, but it is the kind of thing that makes you sit up and jot down the actress’ name. Veteran character actor Pucci is also sexy as the complicated, hip-hop dancing alien who might be a cosmic narcissist or might be a well-meaning but clueless visitor who can’t comprehend human relationships. Gavaris is believable, if mostly relegated to comic relief (although his friendship with Joey plays a crucial role in the movie’s emotional makeup), and Forte puts in fine work as Brian’s unappreciated human assistant resenting the presence of younger and more attractive visitors.

On the other hand, director Addison Heinmann’s tonal shifts and unnecessary stylizations can pose a challenge. Joey’s panic attacks are accompanied by swarms of picture-in-picture popups, and a flashback is done as a Japanese silent movie but with spoken dialogue. These bits sometimes aren’t deployed purposefully, taking us out of the story. Furthermore, the attempts at comedy don’t always arise cleanly out of the more serious themes. Henimann throws a lot of absurdity at the screen, and not all of it works (one thing that does work are Brian’s dance scenes, which are both fun to watch and endearingly quirky). The hazy, neon-lit interspecies sex scenes are also a blast; they’re almost tasteful.

Because of the undisciplined approach, this is an odd movie, as well as a weird one. That said, Touch Me is nowhere near as alienating as its miserable current 4.8 IMDb rating would suggest. Most of the negative sentiments seem to come from people who were hoping for a more straightforward live-action hentai sci-fi horror, and are along the lines of “this was a little too out there for me.” Regular readers of this site will likely find this on the low-to-average end of the weird scale, and uneven, but far from boring. You’re invited to Touch Me: you might enjoy it.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The cherry on top of this admittedly weird cocktail is a strong streak of genuine sensuality – if it’s your first encounter with tentacle sex on screen, you might be surprised how appealing Heimann and his cast have managed to make it seem.”–Catherine Bray, The Guardian (contemporaneous)

Capsules

CAPSULE: WETIKO (2022)

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DIRECTED BY: Kerry Mondragon

FEATURING: Juandaniel García Treviño, Dalia Xiuhcoatl, Neil Sandilands

PLOT: A Mayan boy delivers hallucinogenic toads to a jungle love cult led by a Western shaman and is sucked into their petty intrigues.

Still from Wetiko (2022)

COMMENTS: It’s all fairly coherent until the moth flies into Aapo’s ear. Zake, sus shaman of the “Empire of Love,” wants to host a ritual trip for a tour group in the Mexican jungle. As an outsider, he can’t legally buy the necessary psychedelic toads, so through his sexy right hand gal Luz he drops a wad of cash to rent the toads and milk their trippy secretions for a night of enlightened debauchery. Teenager Aapo motorbikes into the heart of darkness to deliver the bufo, but through plot contrivances ends up staying there all night, despite his mother’s wise warnings to stay away from the unsanctioned ceremony. The Empire of Love compound is inhabited by  assistant shamans, a cadre of quiet servants all bearing the first name “Maria” (one of Wetiko‘s creepiest ideas), and a cray-cray drug-damaged westerner who seems like he will play an important role in the plot, but quickly disappears. Aapo spends an inordinate amount of time prepping the frogs, since his skill with them may be less than the group requires; then, while touring a sacred cave, he gets the aforementioned moth lodged in his ear. Of course, Zake has him chug a bottle of vile-looking green liquid to expel the bug, and of course, the fluid makes Aapo start trembling, sweating, and seeing montages. Although he will sober up every now and then, the remaining two-thirds of the movie are basically a long psychedelic trip. Although everybody seems pretty high, the actual toad ceremony takes forever to arrive, particularly since everyone continually loses track of the frogs themselves.

A lot of people inside the Empire have their own agendas, but with the distracted and fragmented narrative, we never get a clear sense of where the players stand. Even so, lack of clarity in the plot is not a huge impediment for the movie. But the lack of clarity in character motivation is. Aapo is positioned to go on a vision quest, but his character is so bland and ill-defined that we have no sense of what that might entail, other than, perhaps, his sexual initiation into adulthood. The movie is more concerned with villain Zake, who is suitably Machiavellian but whose schemes and plans are little more than a bundle of anti-colonialist and cult-leader tropes, as nebulous the gobbledygook (“welcome, star beings, to our Empire of Love…”) he uses to manipulate his dupes. Sure, the movie drops hints of sleazy land purchases, sexual exploitation, even murder, but what is Zake’s end game? Aapo supplies the hallucinogenic toads, but why Zake is specifically interested in him beyond providing that simple service is left to your imagination. That’s not to mention all the other people in the cult, some of whom may be playing their own games, but all of whose motives remain a mystery, making their eventual power grabs seem arbitrary. Zake is a baleful influence, sure, but he hardly feels real: he’s more a non-specific, obvious symbol of destructive western exploitation.

The rich opportunity to satirize ethnobotanical tourism—the phenomenon of crunchy rich white people traveling to the jungle to take drugs with native shamans—is barely grasped at. Although not strictly a horror movie, Wetiko fits into the folk horror tradition, the kind of flick that might share space on a disc in 2040’s “All The Haunts Be Ours, Vol. 9.” There’s a scene intended to remind you of the ending of Midsommar, and you might almost be tempted to dub it The Wicker Mayan. What Wetiko lacks in logic it seeks to make up through febrile atmosphere, although the low-budget drug scenes relying on odd camera lenses, echo-y audio, neon lighting, and incoherent editing are nothing you haven’t seen before. What’s more effective is the setting itself, the feeling of being abandoned deep in the jungle with no civilization around to help out if things take a turn for the worst. In fact, the movie is at its best in its sober first act, when everything is new and feels more ominous and portentous than events eventually justify. Wetiko initially seems exotic, but ultimately it’s little more than Aapo getting sucked into a bad trip of colonialist metaphors. I’ll stick with street drugs.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…has the hazy vibes of an acid trip, putting the audience alongside Aapo as he’s drawn deeper into this baffling, dangerous underworld.”–Josh Bell, Crooked Marquee (VOD)