{"id":610101,"date":"2026-05-29T10:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/610101\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T10:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:14:09","slug":"i-found-a-place-how-backrooms-captures-the-horror-of-sinister-architecture-horror-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/610101\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I found a place\u2019: how Backrooms captures the horror of sinister architecture | Horror films"},"content":{"rendered":"

When architect turned furniture store owner Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor<\/a>) finds a portal to a mysterious realm of \u201cbackrooms\u201d in the basement of his showroom, he struggles to explain it to his therapist, Dr Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u201cI found a place \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

This otherwise innocuous phrase becomes a chilling summary of the architectural horror<\/a> conjured in Backrooms<\/a>, the latest A24<\/a> thriller that takes us into the liminal spaces of offices, dead malls and other eerie places that exist neither here nor there. Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old director \u2013 the youngest ever to work with the studio \u2013 produced a series of YouTube shorts<\/a> titled Backrooms using just the free 3D software Blender and Adobe After Effects. The series has now been turned into a feature-length film, although it retains its visual language and conceptual framework.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiminal spaces\u201d<\/a> are those places that seem to be in-between other places, or have been left behind by the world. They are what philosopher Mark Auge called non-places, \u201ca space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity\u201d. Architect Rem Koolhaas called them \u201cJunkspace<\/a>\u201d. They are the leftovers produced by advanced modernism, where everything looked the same, and there was a dissolution of \u201cplace,\u201d in favor of neutral, meaningless places such as airports and department stores. \u201cWe have been trending for a few centuries into a spiral of industrialism,\u201d Parsons said on the A24 podcast<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re kind of getting stuck in this monoculture.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As the preeminent liminal space, \u201cbackrooms\u201d, including Parsons\u2019s YouTube series, are a fictional fandom expansion pack of the dead malls of the early 2000s. In fact, the first image to bring liminal spaces into online conversation, posted in 2003, was from the renovation of a furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin<\/a>. With the emptying of the big box store, there is the liminal. Once the in-between spaces borne of the 20th century\u2019s urban modernization \u2013 the junkspace of airports, supermarkets and most importantly, malls \u2013 go out of business, they become even more estranged from their surroundings, more devoid of traces of humanity. The mall is junkspace; the dead mall is liminal space.<\/p>\n

Backrooms builds an entire world of this eerie setting. \u201cThere is probably no better symbol for that kind of monoculture than a drop ceiling,\u201d Parsons said. The fluorescent-lit rooms endlessly replicate, taking Clark and Dr Kline deeper as they try to discern where that world comes from and who controls it. Parsons has a keen interest in what he calls \u201cthe laws of the universe that resulted in our consciousness being the way it is\u201d, and wanted to capture the feeling of infinite bureaucracy on screen. Much like liminal spaces highlight absence, Backrooms generates fear through turning our attention to what is left out; nothing is known about which entities govern the endless space, what is going on beyond doorways and corridors<\/a>, and what set of rules determines it.<\/p>\n

This type of terror is reminiscent of giallo<\/a> films<\/a> including Suspiria and Inferno by Italian film-maker Dario Argento where the building becomes the monster. The surroundings embody some other spirit or evil, without completely revealing what it is. In both films, like Backrooms, the action takes place in nondescript rooms that form a labyrinth. The mental map that a viewer typically makes out of on-screen<\/a> architecture<\/a> becomes incoherent. Clark tries to draw maps of the backrooms, to no avail. The confusion adds to the suspense.<\/p>\n

The combination of eerie and mundane is at the core of the horror in Backrooms. In similar TV shows such as Severance<\/a>, Stranger Things<\/a> or Dark<\/a>, a portal draws us into a world where the rules are not clear. There is someone or some force governing the strange world. Is it a government operation? Interdimensional entities? Corporations with secret technology? Is it the laboratory<\/a> of a time travel, MKUltra<\/a> or UFO program? Or is it something more boring? The mysterious Asych company offers little explanation to Clark.<\/p>\n

Renate Reinsve in Backrooms. Photograph: A24\/AP<\/p>\n

Architect Damjan Jovanovic calls this banality of everyday life \u201cinstitutional uncanny<\/a>\u201d, or \u201cthe aesthetic name for what it feels like to live inside a world that has been brought into being by paperwork rather than by stories\u201d. Artists Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon have coined the term \u201cprotocol art,\u201d a practice that engages with the underlying rules that dictate how culture is produced, distributed and perceived in a digital age. These rules frequently manifest as algorithms, artificial intelligence models, computer protocols, platforms and various technological infrastructures.<\/p>\n

The drop ceilings, the wallpaper, the yellow-tinged lighting all bring about the feelings of absence, in-betweenness, nostalgia and bureaucratic sterility. Like Fritz Lang\u2019s 1927 classic Metropolis<\/a>, it tries to make sense of a rapidly dehumanized built environment and its effects on the human psyche. \u201cThe artistic stages of architecture are … primarily mental spaces,\u201d notes architect Juhani Pallasmaa in describing Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s Rear Window<\/a>. \u201cArchitecture, too, leads our imagination to another reality.\u201d Backrooms constructs a \u201cbuilding\u201d on screen that captures these feelings of liminality, and brings us into that world.<\/p>\n

In Backrooms, this journey is palpable, as we venture deeper with Clark into the mysterious construction below his store. The movie takes the infinite liminal space Parsons conjures from the internet, and continues the long romance between horror and architecture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When architect turned furniture store owner Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds a portal to a mysterious realm of \u201cbackrooms\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-610101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}