How films like Backrooms and Exit 8 are turning liminal spaces into a horror trend
Box-office hit Backrooms highlights a growing obsession with eerie liminal spaces like hallways, alleyways and empty shopping centres
Liminal spaces are blowing up.
Costing just US$10 million to make, Backrooms is undoubtedly in a race with the also recently released Obsession to be the most profitable scary movie of the year. Yet its success is arguably no surprise.
In the film, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, a failed architect who now runs a struggling furniture store. In the store’s basement, he discovers a portal into a labyrinth of empty, eerie spaces.
With walls coloured sickly yellow and illuminated by flickering fluorescent lights, it is the perfect playground for horror – a never-ending industrial nightmare. Or as Clark ominously says, “It’s every place that ever was.”
Inspired by Parsons’ short film series The Backrooms, which first appeared on YouTube in 2022 under his moniker Kane Pixels, this feature adaptation is the latest – and most high-profile – in pop culture’s growing obsession with the liminal space.