When the Past Devours Us: A Christian Look at Backrooms

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the film. It is also important to clarify that this movie is not suitable for everyone. Because of its themes of horror, trauma, violence, anxiety, disturbing imagery, and emotional darkness, each person should wisely evaluate whether watching it could affect their mind, their peace, or their convictions. Not every story needs to be consumed by everyone. As believers, we also discern what we allow into our hearts.

That said, there are films that, even when they are not Christian in intention, end up asking deeply spiritual questions. This is one of them.

At first glance, a movie about the Backrooms could seem like just another horror story. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the Backrooms began as an online legend: the idea that a person can accidentally “fall out” of reality and enter an endless series of hallways, empty offices, damp carpets, fluorescent lights, and nonsensical rooms. Its fascination comes precisely from that: it does not feel like a fantastical hell, but like an ordinary place that feels wrong. They are spaces that should feel familiar, yet they provoke discomfort, loneliness, and fear. That is why they connected so strongly with digital culture: they represent the anxiety of being trapped in a place that seems real, but where something invisible is deeply wrong. Beneath that unsettling atmosphere, however, the film presents a reflection on trauma, sin, guilt, and what happens when a person refuses to face what is destroying them.

At the center of the story are Clark and Mary. Two wounded characters. Two people marked by the past. Two souls trapped in internal places they have not known how to leave behind. Although both carry wounds, their paths end in very different ways.

Clark is consumed.

Mary learns to let go.

And that duality, to me, is the spiritual heart of the film.

The Backrooms as an Image of the Wounded Soul

The Backrooms function as something more than a horror setting. They are a space that seems to remember, but remembers in a distorted way. Everything feels familiar and strange at the same time, as if they were damaged memories. As if the past had taken physical form, but had been deformed by pain, fear, and guilt.

That idea connects deeply with our spiritual lives. We often think the past simply stays behind us because time keeps moving forward. But there are wounds that, when they are not faced, do not remain in the past. They follow us. They shape us. They speak to us.

A person can say, “This is just who I am,” when in reality they should be saying, “This is how I learned to survive.”

That is one of the film’s great conflicts. Clark and Mary do not merely enter a physical place. They enter a space that reveals what they carry inside.

And when the heart has not been healed, what we carry inside can become a monster.

Clark: The Man Who Refused to Repent

Clark is a man destroyed by his own anger. He carries frustration, shame, alcoholism, and resentment. His marriage is broken. His life does not look like what he once dreamed. He wanted to be an architect, but ended up trapped in an existence he resents. Instead of confronting his pain, he projects it onto others.

The most tragic thing about Clark is that he does not seem completely blind. He knows something is wrong. He knows he has wounded others. He knows his anger has had consequences. But recognizing that there is a problem is not the same as repenting.

That is the difference.

Clark wants to explain his sin, but not surrender it. He wants to justify his behavior, but not take responsibility. He wants relief, but not transformation.

When he repeats the idea that he is “programmed that way” or that “this is just who he is,” he is doing something spiritually dangerous: he is turning his sin into his identity.

The Bible speaks clearly about this condition of the human heart. Jesus says in John 3:19:

“And this is the condemnation: that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

Clark is not merely wounded. Clark loves the darkness that protects him from admitting the truth. His anger gives him an excuse. His pain gives him a narrative. His past gives him a way to avoid responsibility.

But sin never stays small.

When it is not confessed, it grows. When it is not confronted, it hardens. When it is not surrendered before God, it begins to consume entire areas of life.

Psalm 38:4–5 describes that experience with a strong image:

“For my iniquities have gone over my head; like a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. My wounds stink and fester because of my foolishness.”

That image fits Clark. His unresolved sin becomes an infected wound. What he tries to hide eventually takes shape. What he refuses to confess eventually hunts him.

That is why the creature that appears at the end is so symbolically powerful. It is not simply a monster. It is a grotesque version of himself. His rage has a body. His shame has a face. His sin has become visible. And when the moment comes to face that creature, Clark does not reject it. He comforts it. He embraces it. In essence, he tells it that they do not have to change.

That is his ending. Clark is devoured by the very thing he decided to accept as part of himself.

Mary: The Woman Who Learned to Let Go

Mary is wounded too, but her wound is presented differently. She does not explode like Clark. She does not destroy through anger. She does not seem out of control. On the contrary, Mary appears stable, professional, calm, and distant.

But the film makes it clear that this calmness is also a mask.

Mary carries deep childhood trauma. Her relationship with her mother, her fear of the outside world, and the image of the window shape the way she lives.

Mary has built a life trying to help others, while she herself remains trapped in her past. This is deeply human. Sometimes we become experts at accompanying other people’s pain because we do not know what to do with our own.

She tries to save. She tries to understand. She tries to control. But eventually, she has to admit a painful truth: she cannot save Clark.

There is a key scene where Mary recognizes that changing him is not in her hands. She can confront him, speak to him, and be present, but she cannot repent for him.

That too is deeply biblical. No one can surrender another person’s heart to God. No one can heal someone who has decided to embrace their prison.

Mary, however, can make a decision about her own wound.

When she uses the piece of stone, an object from her childhood, to defend herself and it breaks, Mary is breaking with what had kept her bound. It does not mean everything disappears magically. It does not mean healing is easy. But it does represent a first step.

Mary stops carrying the past as if it still had absolute authority over her.

While Clark clings to his monster, Mary lets go of the object that represented her trauma.

That is the great difference between the two.

The Wound Is Not an Excuse to Remain the Same

One of the most important Christian readings of this film is that pain must be taken seriously, but it cannot become an excuse to destroy ourselves or others.

Trauma explains many things, but it should not become a throne. Our past can mark our story, but it should not govern our identity.

Clark needed repentance. He needed to recognize his role. He needed to stop blaming everyone else and allow the truth to break him. But he refused. He preferred to keep calling “nature” what was actually slavery.

Mary needed to let go. She needed to recognize that her past had imprisoned her. She needed to stop living as though she were still looking at the world through the fear she inherited. And although her process is not presented as a religious conversion, we do see a powerful image of liberation: she breaks with what had kept her bound.

The Bible calls us to something similar in Hebrews 12:1:

“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

That verse makes an important distinction: there are weights, and there are sins. Not every weight is sin. There are wounds, traumas, losses, and pains we carry because of experiences that marked us. But there are also sins that ensnare us, decisions we make, habits we feed, and darkness we would rather not release.

God wants to work with both.

He wants to heal the weights.

He wants to confront the sin.

He wants to liberate the whole heart.

Sin Consumes When It Is Not Confessed

What we refuse to face can eventually end up facing us.

Unconfessed sin does not remain still. It seeps into our relationships, our way of speaking, our way of loving, our view of God, and our view of ourselves. It promises protection, but isolates us. It promises control, but enslaves us. It promises identity, but deforms us.

Clark was not consumed all at once. He was consumed little by little.

Every excuse brought him closer to the monster. Every act of avoidance sank him deeper. Every time he said, “This is just who I am,” he closed one more door to the possibility of change.

That is why the gospel insists so much on confession. Not because God enjoys humiliating us, but because confession opens the door to grace.

1 John 1:9 says:

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Confession is not merely admitting that something happened. It is choosing to stop protecting the lie. It is allowing the light to enter. It is recognizing that I need forgiveness, cleansing, and transformation.

Clark needed that truth.

Mary, in some way, begins to walk toward it.

A Horror Film with a Spiritual Question

This is not a Christian film. It is not trying to preach the gospel. It was not made for every believer or every conscience. But it does raise questions that Christians can examine with depth.

• What do we do with our wounds?
• What happens when pain becomes identity?
• What happens when we call “personality” what is really unsurrendered sin?
• What monsters are we secretly feeding?
• What part of our past are we still carrying as if it had a right over our future?

Clark and Mary show us two possible paths.

Clark refuses to change and is consumed by what he embraced. Mary faces the symbol of her past and begins to let it go.

The difference is not that one of them had wounds and the other did not. Both were wounded. The difference is what they did with those wounds.

The unaddressed past can imprison us, and unconfessed sin can consume us, but God still calls the human heart out of darkness and into light.

We are not called to deny our wounds. We are called to bring them before God.

We are not called to justify our sin. We are called to confess it, repent of it, and receive grace.

Because if we do not face what is destroying us, sooner or later that very thing may end up devouring our lives.

And perhaps that is the most terrifying image in the entire film: not the monster itself, but the possibility of discovering that the monster had our face.