The loud, constant hum of fluorescent lights rings through their ears. They have no idea whether it’s a sign of how long they’ve been in this odd space, or if they’re simply going crazy. Their steps echo through the large hallways, long corridors that seem to stretch on forever, with no real rhyme or reason. They can’t remember how they had gotten here: There seemed to be no doors around that led anywhere besides another hallway. The musky scent of the carpet flooded their nose with an overwhelming stench of decay as they continued walking, desperately searching for something that could lead them to an exit. This space seemed so familiar: the crunch of the carpet, the faded and cracked yellow wallpaper, and the sporadic flickering lights; they had seen this exact room countless times before… right? Why could they not remember how they had ended up here? The more they walked, the less the hallways seemed to make sense, and the walls began leading to countless dead ends, contorting and connecting in ways that would make no sense in a regular building. The wallpaper progressively becomes more blurry—or is that their vision? They had only been walking around for a few minutes—or was it hours? Maybe days? Nothing about this place made sense, yet it felt so familiar, like it was on the tip of their tongue. They dug through their mind, trying to piece together what little information they had or remembered, but the details slipped as quickly as they appeared. The labyrinth stretches on endlessly before them, leaving them to wander its halls with no end, a victim to the depths of their mind.
What makes one cling to a memory? Is it the feeling it elicits? A time lost that can never be recreated? A nostalgia for better times? Or maybe, just maybe, that shiver of déjà vu, insisting that a person or place has been seen before. Memories are the most valuable part of a person—they’re the foundation of identity, the composition of a person’s life and values. To many, however, losing those memories is just as bad, if not worse, than not making them at all. The slow loss of memories and the lost identity attached to them is a haunting tale that has been retold for ages—yet Kane Parson’s “The Backrooms” has reinvented the story as one of the most psychologically horrifying told in recent memory. The internet phenomenon was born in 2019 from a single image, a barren office space bathed in a yellow hue featuring odd architecture with an even stranger wallpaper that rang eerily familiar. Through this single image, many users created extensive lore around the backrooms including levels, characters, and monsters. However, Kane Parsons, who began his version of the backrooms in 2020 with his video “Found Footage,” takes a far different approach. Rather than relying on the monsters and typical boogeymen archetypes, Parsons highlights the greater psychological and existential horror of the liminal space. Parsons’ liminal space transforms the idea of physically being lost in a familiar space into something far more terrifying: the slow decay of human memories.
One of the most important aspects of the backrooms is its environment. The faded yellow wallpaper and flickering fluorescent lights are all too familiar, yet offer the idea of something sinister lurking in the shadows of the space. The idea of liminal space is rooted in the feeling of déjà vu, utilizing familiar transitional spaces with the most common being hallways, waiting rooms and parking lots. The unsettling aspect of liminal spaces comes from the lack of human interference, leaving the areas completely barren and devoid of their intended purpose. Parsons utilizes this effect throughout much of his work, building large spaces that are devoid of any human presence, leaving the sole inhabitant to wander the endless maze of meaningless construction. However, this architecture also represents the beginnings of memory loss. This is expressed throughout the film through the character of Clark. Clark, introduced as a tired man trying to recover from his broken marriage and alcohol abuse, becomes obsessed by the entrance to the backrooms in his store. As Clark begins to explore more of the backrooms, he begins to lose more of his sense of self and his identity. This is reflected by the evolving architecture of the backrooms, which begins to reflect more of Clark’s fragmented mind and past as the film progresses. The vast expanse attempts to replicate the details of Clark’s life, creating rooms that mimic his old house and a creature that closely resembles his distant wife. As Clark spends time in the endless expanse, he becomes trapped in a cycle of his mind turning against him, rewriting the core of his individuality into a hollow emotionless replica. This is mimicked by the backrooms, taking the familiar and comfortable ideas of his home, life, and connections and turning them into unstable, messy and downright uncomfortable distortions. The backrooms never truly created anything new, it instead is a manifestation of Clark’s own decaying mind, his own identity becoming only a hollow distortion of what it once was. Clark’s experiences with the environment of the backrooms mirrors that of cognitive decline: losing the details of a person, place, or thing, unable to anchor himself to anyone and devoid of the emotional connection that one clings to.
Parsons’ utilization of the environment in the backrooms serves not only to elevate his narrative and lore of the liminal space, but as a weapon of the human subconscious. The horror of Parsons’ storytelling does not come from the entities that exist within the backrooms, but reveals itself as the agonizingly slow and grueling process of watching the people trapped within the space lose themselves, with mere minutes bleeding into days during the events of the film. The environment becomes more than just a space: it becomes the catalyst for a torturous loss of memories and self, turning the nostalgia and familiarity of the backrooms into a reflection of cognitive decline.
Ultimately, “The Backrooms” film and Kane Parsons’ established video series dig deeper into a human fear: the fear of memory loss. By connecting the environment and aesthetic of the backrooms and liminal space as a whole with the slow cognitive decline, Parsons’ vision redefines what being lost actually feels like. Perhaps the most scary thing to be lost in is not a physical space, but rather the inescapable mind filled with fleeting memories. Just as the backrooms continue to evolve and become more distorted, humans will slowly fall victim to the same fate, losing the backbone of their existence.
Written by Nicholas Castillo, Design: Jacqueline Crabb