You think you're alone in the room, but are you really?
As an architecture student, I was fascinated by how Backrooms turned architectural psychology into horror.
A lot of people say there wasn't enough horror because there wasn't a monster constantly chasing the characters and because there's no jumpscares, but I don't think they realize the monster was the architecture itself. And also, it's a psychological thriller and borderline horror. There's a difference. Grow up.
The film uses things we rely on to orient ourselves in space like landmarks, hierarchy, rhythm, daylight, scale, and spatial memory, then removes them or distorts them.
1. That's why Casino's don't have windows. It keeps you occupied and lose track of time. They literally distort your perception of time.
2. That's why shopping malls have looping layouts so you're forced to explore around. Like IKEA, you're psychologically “led” through a curated sequence, minimizing shortcuts and maximizing exposure to products.
3. That's why theme parks have carefully hidden service areas, controlled sightlines, immersive “world bubbles" to make you mentally stay inside a narrative environment where outside cues are eliminated.
But with Backrooms, it's manipulation of space and time and everything. All your senses are manipulated. Every room feels slightly familiar but never fully readable, so your brain keeps trying to build a mental map and failing.
What makes it scary isn't what is in the space, but what the space does to the mind. Humans constantly construct cognitive maps to understand where we are, but Backrooms breaks that process.
The circulation goes nowhere, the repetition erases reference points, and the environment sits in that unsettling zone between recognition and alienation. It creates disorientation, isolation, and paranoia without needing anything supernatural.
That is also why the concept went viral. Liminal spaces, dreamcore, whatever you call it. It feels endless, familiar yet unfamiliar, and deeply convincing in its emptiness. The suspense comes from thinking something else must be there with you, even when there is nothing. That uncertainty is the horror.
Adding paranormal elements often weakens it, because the original fear already comes from space itself, not from what might be inside it.
Hell, even the shot of Mary's "neighborhood" fucked me up because it looks exactly like the ones we see online and how it looks unoccupied.
Backrooms is really just architecture and human perception turned into a mechanism of fear.
I also like how Backrooms turns architecture into an allegory for mental health and the human mind, where spatial disorientation mirrors psychological unraveling.
