Backrooms ending explained: what happened to Clark and Mary

Backrooms, A24’s liminal horror from director Kane Parsons, follows jaded furniture salesman Clark and his therapist Mary as they confront an extradimensional maze that mirrors familiar rooms in distorted form. While Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds a portal through a solid wall in his store, Mary (Renate Reinsve) enters the same space later while searching for him.

Clark leads two employees, Kat and Bobby, into the labyrinth; both are killed after encountering a faceless, malignant entity, and Clark’s sanity frays as he adapts to the emptiness and the Backrooms’ monstrous echoes. Eventually a gigantic, pirate-costumed copy of Clark bites through his neck and then chases Mary through fractured rooms until hazmat-suited scientists intervene and subdue the creature.

The rescuers work for the Async Research Institute, which opened the Threshold between realities and brings Mary into a research facility for questioning by Phil (Mark Duplass).

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