The Haunting Allure of Liminal Spaces: Why 'Backrooms' Resonates Deeply
There’s something profoundly unsettling about liminal spaces—those in-between places that feel neither here nor there. They’re the empty malls, the dimly lit corridors, the abandoned offices that seem to exist outside of time. Personally, I think this is why Backrooms, the latest A24 thriller, has captured the collective imagination. It’s not just a horror film; it’s a mirror held up to our modern anxieties about monotony, bureaucracy, and the loss of human connection.
One thing that immediately stands out is the film’s use of architecture as a source of dread. Director Kane Parsons, a 20-year-old prodigy, transforms the mundane into the monstrous. The endless drop ceilings, the fluorescent lighting, the repetitive wallpaper—these aren’t just set pieces; they’re characters in their own right. What makes this particularly fascinating is how Parsons taps into the concept of ‘junkspace,’ a term coined by architect Rem Koolhaas to describe the soulless, interchangeable environments of modern life. Airports, supermarkets, malls—these spaces are designed to be efficient, but they end up feeling alienating. Backrooms takes this alienation to its logical extreme, turning it into a literal nightmare.
From my perspective, the film’s true horror lies in its ambiguity. We never fully understand the rules of the backrooms or who—or what—controls them. This uncertainty is deliberate. It’s reminiscent of giallo films like Suspiria, where the building itself feels alive and malevolent. But Backrooms goes further by blending the eerie with the banal. The terror isn’t in the supernatural; it’s in the familiarity of the setting. What many people don’t realize is that this tension between the mundane and the terrifying is what makes liminal spaces so compelling. They’re places we recognize, yet they feel off, like a memory we can’t quite place.
What this really suggests is that Backrooms isn’t just about architecture—it’s about the human condition in an increasingly dehumanized world. The film’s protagonist, Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is an architect turned furniture store owner. His descent into the backrooms feels like a metaphor for the modern struggle to find meaning in a world dominated by bureaucracy and uniformity. If you take a step back and think about it, the backrooms could be seen as a physical manifestation of the endless paperwork, algorithms, and protocols that govern our lives.
A detail that I find especially interesting is the film’s connection to internet culture. Parsons’s original YouTube series, created using free software, tapped into a growing fascination with liminal spaces online. The first viral image of a liminal space—an empty furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin—dates back to 2003. Since then, these images have become a kind of digital folklore, shared and reimagined by online communities. Backrooms feels like the culmination of this phenomenon, a film born from the internet’s collective subconscious.
This raises a deeper question: Why are we so drawn to these spaces? In my opinion, it’s because they represent a kind of existential limbo. They’re places where the rules of reality seem to bend, where the familiar becomes strange. They remind us of the fragility of our own sense of place and identity. As philosopher Mark Auge noted, liminal spaces are ‘non-places’—they lack history, context, and meaning. Yet, paradoxically, it’s this very emptiness that makes them so fertile ground for imagination and fear.
What’s truly remarkable about Backrooms is how it transforms this emptiness into something visceral. The film doesn’t rely on jump scares or gore; instead, it builds tension through atmosphere and ambiguity. The endless corridors, the humming fluorescent lights, the sense of being watched—these elements create a sense of dread that lingers long after the credits roll. Personally, I think this is why the film resonates so deeply. It’s not just a horror story; it’s a reflection of our own anxieties about modernity and the loss of humanity in an increasingly homogenized world.
If you’re like me and find yourself drawn to the strange and the unsettling, Backrooms is a must-watch. But be warned: once you step into its liminal world, you might find it harder to escape than you think.
