When you’ve seen a lot of the best horror movies like I have, there’s a sort of confidence that starts to set in about being able to handle any creepy concept that Hollywood comes up with. Never did I think a movie based on a creepypasta would affect me the way that the Backrooms movie did, but here we are, and I need to talk about the unique way the movie got under my skin. No jump scares in this article: these thoughts are spoiler free!
How Scary Can A Bunch Of Rooms Be?
Even though I very much grew up with the internet and literally contribute to it daily as a writer here on CinemaBlend, I’m the sort of person who’s always looking confused at popular memes and internet references when people quote them to me. I guess I just don’t really follow that side of the internet as much as my peers? So, when I saw the trailer for Backrooms, I had no skin in the game. It did pique my interest though. It looked like the kind of fresh concept I want to see out of more upcoming horror movies.
Before seeing Backrooms, I really didn’t think it’d be scary to me. Sure, a series of yellow-stained liminal spaces is unsettling, but what are they going to do? Clearly, I had no idea what to expect.
The Unexpected Way Backrooms Made Me Feel
Let’s cut to how I felt leaving the theater. After spending almost two hours in the backrooms, I couldn’t help but see everything around me differently. I realized the backrooms aren’t just weird-looking rooms – they also encompass an amalgamation of all of our man-made normalcies like street signs, fluorescent-lit rooms and such. We’re used to seeing these fixtures in our everyday life, but I don’t typically stop to think about them too hard.
After seeing them distorted to be a sort of monster of our human creations, it felt like everywhere I looked I was seeing the unnatural state of our world. It made me feel existential about the places we’ve created in the world we live in, and the abnormal and bizarre forms around us that we just accept as part of reality. It made me think about all the ways in which we’ve repressed the Earth’s inherent beauty just to build offices with ugly wallpaper and cubicles.
In my own life, I’m always trying to remember to go outside and I find stillness and peace in looking at blue skies or hearing the rustle of trees. Backrooms tapped into my fears because it’s an endless void of rooms without windows or doors to the natural state of our world outside. I realized being stuck in a place like this is actually a new nightmare of mine now... and yet somehow already was?
The whole movie made me want to run outside and go camping somewhere. I love when a scary movie can make me reflect on our own existence and ask questions I wouldn’t have thought about otherwise. Backrooms is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, and I’d love to see more movies set in this world. Anyways, those are just my thoughts. You can check out what critics are saying about Backrooms and see it yourself in theaters now.
