Horror aesthetics shift across generations, moving from Gothic castles to suburban abandoned houses and, for younger audiences, into online and virtual spaces. Backrooms grew from a YouTube found-footage video uploaded while its creator was still in high school, using Blender and focusing on liminal horror in places like malls and fluorescent-lit hallways. The original video gained massive views, and A24 later supported a live-action film version built as a 30,000-square-foot real-world complex. The film does not require prior study of the lore, encouraging viewers to experience disorientation directly. The opening scene mirrors the original video, showing a cameraman panicking in infinitely repeating yellow rooms until a pixelated creature appears and the feed cuts. World-building remains intentionally coy, offering hints of a larger sci-fi horror plot while explaining little.
"Every generation has its own idea of what horror should look like. In the creaky old days of Hammer Films, it looked like a Gothic castle, complete with a cobwebbed crypt. By the Stephen King era in the 1980s, fear had moved into the abandoned house at the end of the block in an all-American small town. And given how much time the members of Gen Z and Generation Alpha spend online, it makes sense that the spaces that capture their imaginations would be virtual as well."
"Parsons was still in high school when he uploaded " The Backrooms (Found Footage) " to YouTube, building on a growing fascination with "liminal horror" that reframes abandoned malls, industrial hallways, and buzzing fluorescent lights from neutral spaces into sites of eldritch terror. That video, which has since racked up an astounding 78 million views, was made with the computer-graphics software Blender; only now, with the backing of A24, have the Backrooms become a real place, a 30,000-square-foot complex that was created for the live-action film version of Parsons' web series."
"It should be mentioned here that a lot of Backrooms lore exists online, although you don't have to study it before seeing the film. In fact, it probably helps to go in blind - all the better to be discombobulated by the film's unique setting. The opening scene of Backrooms calls back to Parsons' original video, as an unseen cameraman reacts with panic after materializing in a mysterious space made up of infinitely repeating rooms, all of them with the same yellow wallpaper and musty-looking carpet."
"A24 The world-building in Backrooms is coy, suggesting the outline of a grand sci-fi/horror plot while actually explaining very little about it. At times, it feels like watching a v"
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