Backrooms: the horror film where the architecture is the villain

May 29. A low-budget horror film shot in empty office spaces and mall corridors is getting passed around design and film circles for reasons that have nothing to do with jump scares. Backrooms, directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons and released earlier this year, turns liminal space into the antagonist.

The premise: a man falls through reality into a sprawling network of yellow-wallpapered rooms, fluorescent-lit hallways, and carpeted nowhere. No monster. No obvious threat. Just the architecture of in-between spaces stretching infinitely. The concept originated as an internet creepypasta in 2019, describing a place you could "no-clip" into by accident, a glitch in the fabric of the real world. Parsons adapted it into a 10-minute short in 2022 that went viral. The feature-length version extends the dread.

What makes it work is the setting. Empty conference rooms with bad carpet. Hallways that turn but lead nowhere. Spaces that feel like they were designed by a committee that forgot to finish. The film leans into a specific discomfort: the feeling of being in a place that exists only to connect other places. A stairwell at 11 p.m. A parking garage on a Sunday. A hotel corridor at checkout time. Parsons shoots these spaces with the patience of someone who knows the unease builds slower than the cut.

The film's production mirrors its aesthetic. Parsons shot most of it alone or with a skeleton crew, using abandoned retail spaces and office buildings. No major studio backing. No effects budget to speak of. The lighting is fluorescent because the locations came with fluorescent. The edit is lo-fi because the edit was done in a bedroom. The result reads more like found footage than a feature, which is the point.

Liminal space as horror isn't new. But Backrooms isolates the architecture from everything else. No backstory. No lore dumps. Just the space, the walking, the doors that open into more of the same. The viewer is left with the structure itself as the threat. A place that exists but has no reason to.

Backrooms is streaming independently and making the festival circuit. The director is 20. The budget was under six figures. The villain is a hallway.