“Back Rooms” was born from the digital age, among the 4Chan and Creepypasta realms. It’s a pocket within our world that is completely cut off from the rest of what we could rationally consider reality. It is a series of endless rooms and hallways that stretch for a nigh infinite space, all of which are typically a noxious yellow, completely void of any life, and filled with the annoying, deafening hum of florescent lights. I’m only vaguely familiar with the meme of the Back Rooms, but it’s been widely circulated and explored much in the vein of other digital legends like the Slenderman and Sirenhead.
“Back Rooms” is a found footage short that centers on a cameraman who, while working on an independent film project with his friends, trips, falls and wakes up in a bizarre, seemingly inhospitable, and deserted building. In front of endless corridors, empty rooms and hallways, which are mostly illuminated by sickly yellow lights, he wanders aimlessly, room to room, corridor to corridor until he comes across a strange graffiti message on a wall reading: “Don’t move… stay still.”
Directed by Kane Parsons (also a VFX artist), “Back Rooms” is a truly scary and genuinely unnerving piece of short horror that literally kept me shielding my eyes over and over. Within the span of nine minutes, Parsons drops us in to this utterly impossible, but horrifying dimension, offering complete silence save for the hum of the Back Rooms and the anxious breathing of the camera man. What makes “Back Rooms” so utterly scary is that it taps in to the concept of “Liminal Space,” an environment bereft of life, or motion that feels like a void completely separate from our own world.
“Back Rooms” plays on that inherent fascination and fear voids and empty spaces, and perfectly realizes the “Back Rooms” Creepypasta. Parsons is a brilliant director who realizes a terrifying world our protagonist is seemingly trapped in. It’s literally fodder our nightmares are composed of. Paired with the grainy VHS aesthetic, and lack of horror score, “Back Rooms” is a fantastic horror film that thrives on deriving terror from the unknown. I can’t wait to see what Kane Parsons can do with a feature format.