An attempt to “Gaslight” us?
Ref, thread on “Gaslight”.
The whole plot pf Backrooms revolves around the disorienting and unsettling concept of liminal spaces.. “An absence of people, activity, or context normally expected in a built setting that makes a familiar place appear uncanny or surreal.”
The effect was used in The Shinning (1980) with the abandoned Overlook Hotel, the more recent Vivarium (2019), The Langoliers (1995) miniseries, and the aforementioned Severance. Also reminded me a bit of the film Cube (1997).
Apparently the Severance creators used the Backrooms internet Reddit / 4Chan phenomenon as inspiration.
I thought it was a good film in that it really created a dread and unease, both when the characters are in “The Complex / Backrooms” and when they are in what is ostensibly the “real world”.
I head they plan to make sequels. But I’m wondering if there’s much more to this than just an infinite unsettling environment? Would it become like Lost where it’s only really interesting because it’s full of disorienting questions about how these corporate scientists accidently broke reality but becomes stupid once they try to explain it too much?
Yeah I forgot about cube, that one is similar. Though backrooms still has the thing of being a normal-ish environment, but not trivial to exit from (unlike The Shining).
Anyway, I liked all those movies are they are all unsettling in their own ways.
On the face of it, it looks difficult, but I might compare it to Squid Game, say. In SG, the first series was mostly about the premise and world, and anticipation of what would happen if/when someone won. For the second season, we as the audience are keen to get back into that world, but also know it pretty well, so they put us back in there, but then broke it, so we didn’t know what’s coming next.
I’m not sure if season 2 was as good as 1, but overall they landed the plane. And I think a Backrooms 2 could take the same approach. Tell a different story, and not merely “the same, but BIGGER”
I just wonder if they can ever actually explain what is going on without it sucking:
Magic / (super)natural phenomenon?
Aliens?
Virtual reality (the clipping through the world and uncanny recreations are very reminiscent of AI online gaming).
I’m probably not going to see the movie, as I avoid horror films, but it’s on HBO MAX if you have that and want to watch it.
This sort of mind-bending horror film I tend to enjoy.
But I have to say there is no way in hell I would go exploring around some infinite liminal space I found while glitching through an already creepy basement.
I spent several hours today exploring an art installation in Vegas called Omega Mart and I couldn’t help thinking of this film while doing so. It doesn’t have the horror elements of Backrooms but in many ways it works on the same level. You are confronted with weird retro-futuristic technology and rooms that must have had some purpose at one time. After reading up on it, there is a storyline to be discovered only by extended and frequent trips. But like the idea of a Backrooms sequel, I’m not sure knowing the whole story has any real added value to the experience. At least not for me.
I’ve been lost in an IKEA store for hours. Now without the scent of horse flavored meatballs, I might never find my way out.
This phenomenon–large empty spaces–having a name (“liminal”) and a subculture was new to me. I’ve always been fascinated by large empty spaces, possibly due to being an introverted person. Post-apocalyptic movies with empty malls and empty grocery stores and such always had an appeal for me.
So it’s interesting to discover this new genre of movie/online videos. I have no doubt that the massive success of Backroooms-the-movie will mean that a sequel will be released before very long.
In addition to the other works cited above, it seems to me that recent movies about Escape Rooms may have contributed. The spaces in the handful of movies released may not be large as such, but they are empty. At least one of those movies had a supernatural element, too.
I was also very much reminded of the 2013 movie Under the Skin. In that film, humans entered the door of an unassuming-looking house, and found themselves inside a huge space that did not follow the usual laws of physics. As in Backrooms, most people entering the space (by being teleported to an alien ship?) came to bodily harm.
And there’s the added element of the Big Corporation and whatever it is up to.
At the end of Backrooms when the Mark Duplass character is interviewing Mary, he keeps looking over uneasily at the two-way mirror along the side of the room. If it’s only his fellow-humans back there, why would he be so nervous? Are some other entities overseeing the corporation’s actions?
There’s a lot they could explore in a sequel.
Just watched this as it’s now on HBO. Both this and Obsession got a ton of praise about being masterpieces of new horror. Maybe I’m overestimating the praise and it was more in the context of budget and young directors, but I thought both were merely ok. I don’t love horror as a genre, but when Hereditary got similar praise it felt earned.
I remember the shorts going viral and not being taken in by them so maybe this just isn’t my jam. Never really loved the SCP foundation stuff either, but I suppose that’ll be made into a film too.
I suspect it is a lot less impressive on a small screen. Everything good about it (which doesn’t include the “story”) is in the visuals and I know my living room would be too distracting to get as engrossed in it as I was in a theater.
Maybe, but the original videos were made for youtube and I didn’t get what everyone loved about them then so I don’t think it’s that.
Think of it as a CGI demo. Good advertisement for Blender.
That’s not Backrooms; that’s Njarnia.
Most people probably figured this out but there is a long post-credits scene.
Impressive for a 20 year old filmmaker, especially the actors he was able to get.
The multi-language recordings seemed to be from the Voyager record…
There was a fake movie mentioned in Seinfeld: “BLIMP!”
CBS Sunday Morning ran a story yesterday on the phenomenon of YouTube creators as film directors (featuring Backrooms and Obsession in particular). The story quoted Matt Belloni, founding partner at Puck News, and the host of “The Town” podcast, addressing whether we will see more like this
“‘Backrooms’ had a world around it,” said Belloni. “It had something that particularly high school kids and 20-somethings knew about. If you’re a studio, you want a pre-interested audience. ‘Pre-branded’ is what they say, and that’s what ‘Backrooms’ ended up being for that audience.”
Will we see more of this? Belloni said, "We’re seeing announcements once a week from studios around town that are at least developing projects based on YouTube videos, or creators that have a following – you know, this guy has a couple million followers, let’s see what he can do."
Probably some or most of the subsequent movies from YouTube content creators will be less successful. (I’m just hoping for something not horror.)
I just watched it last night and enjoyed it. The establishing setting of that sad, sad 90s era furniture warehouse was a prefect launching point for the actual Backrooms.
I’ve been interested in the concept of liminal spaces for awhile now. I studied Art History in the course of getting a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and the idea of liminal spaces reminds me of the Surrealism movement. Not so much full-blown Surrealism, as in Dali and his melting clocks, but there’s a subtle surrealism that runs through the work of certain artists, like Edward Hopper. Strictly speaking he’s considered a realist, but there’s a certain emptiness to the spaces in his paintings that give them a sort of sad, lonely, eerie vibe. Also Andrew Wyeth and the famous painting Christina’s World. As in Hopper’s work, it’s in a realistic style, but the wide open, empty space with the crawling woman and far-off farmhouse definitely convey an eerie, otherworldly feeling.
For a little while I fell into a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole watching abandoned mall videos. If you want to see real-world liminality in action, that’s about as close as it gets. Not so much the completely shut down and decaying malls that the YouTubers had to sneak into, the creepier ones were the malls that were still open to the public because one or two anchor stores were still hanging on, even though the internal stores were all long shuttered. The mall is still in reasonably good shape, the lights are all on, the muzak is playing, yet the mall is utterly deserted. You can hear faint alarms going off, which the YouTuber making the videos explained as false alarms going off in some of the shut down stores-- apparently it’s the responsibility of the store owner to shut down the alarm, so no more store owner, no one to turn it off. Maybe the couple security guards left to guard the mall could go shut them down too, but they just don’t care.
Technically I’m more of an ambivert. An ideal weekend for me used to be spend most of the day just doing my own thing, but then meet up with friends later and spend the next 8 hours just hanging out doing New York shit.
But I have to say, I’ve also had a bit of a fascination with unused or “off hours” spaces. An incomplete wing of a shopping mall. A suburban development during the day while everyone is at work. Some out of the way section of a large hotel or conference center.
There’s actually this whole network of underground “backrooms”-like tunnels in Midtown Manhattan that connects the subway with the sublevels for a stretch of skyscrapers along Sixth Avenue with the underground network of shops and restaurants at Rockefeller Center.
It kind of feels like stepping out of sync with society for a bit. Which I guess is the unsettling part.
The entire film Under the Skin gave me that feeling of unease. Like it’s a hard watch because the entire film is ordinary, mundane settings in Scottland, but seen through the eyes (or whatever) of an alien disguised as Scarlet Johannson. Everything is surreal and uncanny and threatening.
Annihilation was like that too. Yes, you also had traditional “monster attacks”. But the whole setting just gives off that uncanny insanity-inducing “it looks harmless and familiar, but everything is dangerously ‘off’” vibe.
I’ve been to the American Dream mall in the Meadowlands of NJ a few times when it first opened before most of the stores opened. Even if I go during the day at an off time, I still get that vibe.
First of all, it’s enormous. I forget if American Dream or Mall of America is the largest in the country but it’s that scale. It’s like a cross between driving to Laguardia Airport and an abandoned dystopian city from the not-too-distant future.
Conveniently located next to an equally ginormous (unused at the time) MetLife Stadium with its miles of empty parking lots and an endless flat featureless wetland mostly known as a dumping ground for Mafia hitmen.
After parking my car in a mostly empty garage, I proceed to walk around the endless stores with the constant dull din of Muzak playing. And it’s not an intuitive layout. This weird passage leads to an ice rink. That one leads to a water park. This one leads to an indoor ski slope. These stairs go down to a sublevel that leads to the wrong garage. This courtyard has some dude renting those creepy animal things kids can ride on. Here’s a long wing of high-end stores all “Coming Soon”.
There are a few other people around, but somehow that’s more unsettling. Like “what’s that weirdo doing here”? I’m having “crazy thoughts” about that random dude could just murder me here in this big empty space..which means they might be having similar crazy thoughts about me.
Another film that comes to mind is the end of Vanilla Sky. An abandoned Times Square in broad daylight has to be the ultimate liminal space.