Editorials
The 10 Most Psychotic Exes in Horror
In Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, Elisabeth Moss plays Cecilia, a woman whose nightmare is only just beginning after escaping from an abusive relationship. Her ex commits suicide and leaves her his fortune under specific criteria, but she soon suspects that his death was a hoax. That he’s still there, unseen and stalking her.
Based on the trailer, Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) looks downright terrifying while “alive.” Still, the freedom to torture Cecilia under the mask of invisibility looks to take the terror to a whole new unrelenting level. In anticipation, we look back at some of horror’s most intimidating and psychotic exes.
What Lies Beneath – Norman Spencer
After her daughter leaves for college, creepy things start happening around Claire’s house. She thinks she’s haunted, her husband Norman thinks she’s coping with empty nest syndrome. It doesn’t help that she notices her neighbors’ volatile relationship or that Norman is always away at work. Claire isn’t losing her mind, though; her husband’s secret lover is haunting her. And the undead ex wants justice. Norman murdered the woman when she threatened to expose the affair, and when he couldn’t gaslight his wife any longer, he tried to kill her, too. On the surface, Norman is a charming scientist and doting husband, but it’s an airtight mask for the homicidal narcissist underneath. That he’s so socially adept and cunning makes him a far more dangerous; you won’t know you’re in harm’s way until far too late. You can stream this now on Netflix and Tubi.
Scream 4 – Jill Roberts
Sidney Prescott’s niece seems perfectly well adjusted for most of the movie. At least all things considered. She’s still reeling from a recent breakup with her boyfriend Trevor, who took her virginity then slept with another girl. Then there’s the matter of Ghostface, who’s resurfaced in conjunction with Sidney’s return to Woodsboro to slay again. It turns out hell hath no fury like a psycho scorned, though, and Jill reveals herself to be the murdering mastermind of the film. Still holding a serious grudge against her ex, she not only sets him up as her patsy, but she shoots him in the crotch before executing him.
Hellbound: Hellraiser II – Frank and Julia Cotton
In the sordid saga of the Cotton family, exes Frank and Julia are equally psychotic. Nevermind that Julia cheated on her husband Larry with his brother Frank while Frank was alive, or that she murdered for him so he could regenerate his flesh after escaping Hell. When Frank shows no remorse for killing Julia in Hellraiser, it sparks a severe grudge match in Hellbound. Both are ruthless killers, and yet there’s not enough room in Hell for these former lovers. Hellbound: Hellraiser II is currently streaming on Hulu and Prime Video.
May – May Dove Canady
From the moment we meet May, it’s clear she’s off-kilter. Socially awkward and friendless, save for her doll Suzie, May longs for connection. She finds that with Adam. At least until she becomes sexually aroused by cannibal horror and tries to emulate it in a makeout session. He’s repulsed. Then she begins a fling with the flirtatious Polly but is devastated to discover Polly moves on quickly. May grows increasingly delusional and depressed by the rejections, and a triggering event causes her to snap. It doesn’t end well for her exes. May is available now on Tubi.
Fear – David McCall
Teen Nicole Walker finds herself immediately attracted to the older, bad boy David (Mark Wahlberg). The feeling is mutual, much to the chagrin of her father. After a while, though, his charm wears thin and gives way to angry and controlling behavior. Then he rapes her best friend and murders another. Naturally, Nicole decides it’s time to break up. David doesn’t take the rejection well, and he becomes violently unhinged.
Play Misty For Me – Evelyn Draper
When you think of psychotic exes, Glenn Close’s unhinged stilted lover in Fatal Attraction tends to come to mind. Evelyn Draper is the deadlier precursor. Radio DJ Dave happens across Evelyn at a bar, and the two embark on a casual relationship. Except, Evelyn didn’t meet Dave by chance, she was already a fan of his radio show. Her obsessive behavior grows progressively worrisome until Dave breaks it off with her. Cue the suicide attempts, vandalism, and physical assaults on those in Dave’s life. It culminates in an explosive finale where people wind up dead.
Audition – Asami Yamazaki
Shigeharu Aoyama thinks he’s found the perfect new mate in the docile Asami. Neither he nor the viewer realize until far too late that Asami has a serious jealousy streak. Lovers that don’t have eyes for her, and her only, suffer the worst possible fate. We know this because Shigeharu slowly discovers a grisly trail of Asami’s former lovers. More importantly, we know this because Asami keeps an ex of hers in a burlap sack, many of his limbs amputated. She feeds him her vomit. Shigeharu’s on his way to becoming her next former lover. Audition is currently streaming on Shudder.
Nightmare – George Tatum
After spending years in a mental institution recovering from a break that resulted in the murder of a family in New York, George is released. He decides to head to Florida to see his ex-wife and their children. The only problem is that it doesn’t take much to trigger his psychosis, and his road trip to Florida is littered with a lot of dead bodies. This Video Nasty slasher gets gory, and George’s instability is extra dangerous for his former family. Nightmare is currently available to stream on Prime Video and Tubi.
Possession – Anna
When Mark returns home, his wife tells him she wants a divorce. Thus, one of horror’s most challenging, complex, and bizarre portraits of a marriage’s disintegration begins. Mark follows Anna, beats her human lover, discovers an inhuman lover, and keeps human body parts in the fridge. That’s just the tip of the iceberg in her breakdown. Of Mark’s as well. This is a psychotronic breakup movie that refuses to adhere to linear storytelling or traditional tropes. It’s insanity at its best.
The Brood – Nola Carveth
Nola is in the midst of a painful custody battle with her ex over their daughter. She’s also an extremely disturbed woman undergoing experimental therapy that’s supposed to allow the patient to let go of their suppressed emotions through physiological changes to their bodies. For Nola, that means giving birth to asexual children through her psychoplasmically-induced external womb, creating a brood of them that brutally murder those involved in her ex’s life. David Cronenberg’s divorce movie goes heavy on body horror and psychosis, in the best way. The Brood is available on Kanopy or the Criterion Channel.
The iconic line “If you build it, they will come” may have originally referred to a baseball field, but I’d argue that the record-breaking success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms is proof that the line could also refer to well-crafted movies about ideas that young cinemagoers actually care about.
Yet, despite being based on Parsons’ existing ARG/Webseries, the A24-produced film is more of a standalone tale exploring the personal implications of the titular rooms rather than a traditional examination of the hard sci-fi elements present in the source material.
This less lore-reliant approach was a genius move, as the resulting film ended up being equally accessible to both existing fans and newcomers alike. That’s not to say that Backrooms doesn’t engage with the existing mythology in new and interesting ways, however, as the film heavily expands on the Async Research Institute and the cryptobiology of the rooms themselves. With that in mind, I’m diving a little deeper into these connections in order to help fledgling Backrooms enthusiasts find their way around the yellow labyrinth.
As is to be expected from this kind of article, there are major spoilers ahead, so proceed at your own risk if you’ve yet to see the movie!
Who is Async Research Institute in the Backrooms Movie?
Backrooms. Courtesy of A24.
Of course, if we’re going to discuss the connections between the series and the film, a good place to start would be Async itself. The California-based Foundation plays a brief yet pivotal role in the film as outside observers that only really interfere with the main plot during the final act. While the Foundation is the main focus of the ARG, they’re mostly hinted at in the film.
Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Clark runs into several Async-built “anomaly lures” during his exploration of the liminal space (mostly in the form of human-shaped cut-outs accompanied by audio recordings inspired by the 1977 Voyager Golden Record), as well as surveillance cameras and evidence that at least one of their agents has become trapped in the rooms – though we’ll get to this last detail later.
It’s only towards the end of the flick that Foundation agents finally show up in their iconic yellow protection suits and “rescue” Renate Reinsve’s Mary by pulling her back to “reality” through a familiar portal, though it’s heavily implied that they might not be all that concerned with her well-being.
After all, long-time fans are aware that Async has been researching the “Complex” (their official name for the Backrooms phenomenon) since at least the late 1980s, with their Threshold experiments being based on a Low-Proximity Magnetic Distortion System prototype developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1982. Unfortunately, their experiments have likely resulted in hidden portals appearing more frequently in the outside world, which consequently leads to more people accidentally “no-clipping through reality”. And that’s not even mentioning the occasional earthquake caused by unstable Thresholds!
Where the Backrooms Fits in the Original ARG Timeline
Kane Parsons’ “The Backrooms” horor short
Though the film takes place in 1990, the ARG’s timeline actually begins in 1996, with the original found footage upload and the ensuing research sparked by the video serving as sequels to the A24 production. Not only that, but film’s Still Life monsters (“misremembered” versions of real people who wandered into the rooms) appear to be precursors to the Lifeform from the series.
In the original videos, it’s speculated that the humanoid predator inhabiting the Complex is the result of a novel strain of hay bacillus forming a human-shaped colony, though the addition of the Still Life mythology may very well mean that the mutated hay bacillus itself is a Still Life reproduction of an existing bacteria that somehow fell into the Complex.
The film also offers us an interesting clue into the history of the Foundation when Mark Duplass’ Phil talks about how the company used to work with MRI machines. This seemingly innocuous origin for the secretive organization implies that the Complex itself might be the result of some advanced form of neural imaging – as if the Threshold is somehow opening a portal to the universe’s -or even God’s- subconscious mind.
Who is Naren Warne and Why is He Important to Backrooms Lore?
Async researches in “Backrooms” web series
One of the more direct connections between the film and the series happens to be Avan Jogia’s Naren Warne, an unfortunate Async Institute scientist who shows up in the movie’s found footage prologue. A now-deleted Discord post by Kane Parsons himself suggests that Warne was originally a part of the Missing Persons survey team that discovered a dead body taken over by “mold” (the aforementioned hay bacillus).
At some point during the expedition, Naren appears to have been separated from the rest of the team and wound up wandering alone in the Backrooms. The film opens with the desperate scientist’s VHS footage as he records his attempts to contact his superiors and is ultimately chased down by an unseen Lifeform.
While this prologue mostly serves to establish that the Backrooms contain more than empty hallways, it’s fun to see Parsons include a trail of breadcrumbs leading back to the lo-fi source material even when working on such a high-profile production.
Naturally, there are other curious connections to be found here, such as a faithful recreation of the original photo that spawned the Backrooms creepypasta in the first place, as well as audio cues harkening back to the various TikTok musical trends that often accompany liminal horror content.
However, half the fun of engaging with lore-heavy material comes from discussing theories with fellow fans, so I’d like to invite readers to comment below with your own favorite additions to the lore/references to the ARG! Just be sure to watch out for suspicious-looking furniture salesmen – especially if they’re dressed up like a pirate.
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