My Backrooms Take/Theory (Spoilers for Movie, YouTube Series and The Oldest View by Kane Parsons)

Much like Kane's 'The Oldest View' series, the Backrooms seems to be entirely constructed from memories.

It takes elements from the real world but distorts them. It’s like the movie's analogy of describing a dog to someone who has never seen one—the Backrooms is what happens when you try to physically manifest a partial, subjective memory.

The Catalyst:

The film reveals that ASYNC previously manufactured MRI machines, which are designed to study and capture the brain.

The Theory:

It appears that an initial malfunction didn't just open a gateway; it actually created the Backrooms by capturing an imprint of a person's brain and memories, projecting them into a physical space.

The obvious flaw in the "memory" theory is that one person's memories couldn't generate an infinite space. The answer to this lies in time distortion.

We know time in the Backrooms is not linear. Between Peter Tench's disappearance, Clark's time in the complex seemingly longer than the time it takes Mary to find him, and the blending of past and future elements, time in the complex acts more like a ball of "wibbly wobbly, timey wimey" stuff.

People hop forward, and time moves at different speeds.

Because of this, the Backrooms acts as a continuous extension of that original MRI incident. Every time a person falls into the complex—whether in the past, present, or future—a snapshot of their memories is taken, and the complex expands.

Because time is distorted, the memories of every person who will ever enter the complex were likely imprinted at the exact same point ASYNC first opened the gate.

This explains the timeline inconsistencies, such as the ASYNC employee seeing the Ottoman's Empire furniture sign in the first scene before Clark ever even enters the complex.

A possible extension to the Theory:

When a person's memories seep into the complex, the Backrooms seems to specifically latch onto trauma. We constantly revisit traumatic memories in our heads, so the Backrooms physically compartmentalizes and warps them, much like we do:

Clark's Kitchen: Clark views this as traumatic and he keeps revisiting it.

Mary's Childhood Home: Revealed at the end of the film, her memories imprint the rubble, the sign, and the destruction of her home onto the complex.

The "Still Life" Entities: They are not recreations of past victims, they are manifestations of how entrants view themselves and the people around them:

Captain Clark acts as a monster because, deep down, that is exactly how Clark views himself.

Still Life Mary is two-faced, reflecting how she views herself: a professional therapist who is secretly haunted by her own unresolved trauma.

The Wife in the Kitchen has multiple faces. While the exact meaning is unclear, it is almost certainly a Still Life recreation based on how Clark interprets his wife.

The "Answer":

If the complex and monsters are built from trauma. Then what is the solution?

Running away clearly isn't the right option. After all, you can't run from your trauma for ever.

The answer is clearly to tackle it head on. Through therapy, etc.

To say it simply "Don't move. stay still" (Hopefully the youtube series fans will like that reference).

TLDR:

The Backrooms physically captures the way we interpret our own memories and the people in our lives. It is an infinite space built from the traumatic memories of everyone who has ever entered—past, present, and future—collated together by the complex's non-linear time.

A Final Question:

Am I right in thinking there was a scene towards the end where an MRI test on Captain Clark revealed it had a brain? If so, what could this mean?

Additionally, Kane has previously gone on record to say that Ivan Beck is both the Protagonist and Antagonist of the Backrooms YouTube series. Could it be that perhaps Ivan was "patient zero" in the MRI incident and that his memory imprint caused the creation of the backrooms. Meaning he both created and is trying solve the backrooms. As such he is both?