Fans of The Backrooms are probably familiar with the merit of liminal horror and the uncanny atmosphere that it brings to the genre. As much as ghost stories and creature features dominate the proverbial horror hall of fame, the reality-bending, disquieting presence of the warped mundane holds a special place in film history. The popularity of the psychological and experimental subgenres skyrocketed in recent years, especially within online spaces and short-form video content platforms, but it’s by no means a novel phenomenon of the 21st century. Analog horror, conversely, only manifested as a distinguishable subgenre in the last couple of decades. Largely unexplored by major studios, its central tenets are nostalgia—especially old technology—surrealism, mystery, and nonlinearity. Its appeal once stemmed, in part, from its relegation to niche online communities, but it appears it’s broken containment.
“Can we watch something happy?” – Skinamarink (2022)
The Backrooms (2026) — the upcoming A24 horror directed by wunderkind Kane Parsons — is based on an online series created by Parsons himself in 2022. He produced each of the found footage iterations of the series in Blender and Adobe After Effects, astounding his audience with their realism. The three original videos feature three victims accidentally falling (or “noclipping”) through holes in reality while holding digital camcorders and documenting their long walks through impossible spaces, sickening yellow walls, and a nagging sense that the spaces were echoes of something familiar.
The movie trailer and teaser suggest that The Backrooms exist as some kind of conscious entity capable of “remembering” places that once existed, and “the more it remembers, the less it does.” With this in mind, major themes of the film might include collective memory, cognitive decline, and madness. Here are four films that contain what The Backrooms promises to deliver and are some of the hallmarks of uncanniness in film.
1. Skinamarink (2022)
Stream on: Tubi (Free) & Shudder
Most people (especially horror fans) remember staring at the wall too long in the dark as a child and tricking themselves into seeing vaguely human-shaped shadows; those imaginative people experienced most of Skinamarink. This movie is deeply polarizing, with audiences either connecting deeply to it or frustratedly leaving their theater seats.
Skinamarink is the first wide-release film that nails the feeling of watching something terrifying on YouTube at 2 a.m. This is likely because the film’s creator, Kyle Edward Ball, released a YouTube short film called Heck (which is almost identical to the feature-length movie) in 2020. Both were inspired by feelings and nightmares confined to childhood misunderstandings of darkness, filmed with heavy flickering visual noise and a deep blue hue, punctuated by distorted whispers and loops of old cartoons. Between the unrelenting slow crawl of dark corners and the corrupted icons of nostalgia scattered across the floor, Skinamarink stands at the frontier of analog horror in film like The Backrooms’ troubled older brother.
For a full review of Skinamarink, click here.
2. Vivarium (2019)
Stream on: Tubi (Free)
Vivarium tells the story of a house-hunting young couple. Tom, a landscaper, and Gemma, an elementary school teacher, venture into a real estate office that offers homes at a new development. When they drive up to the prospective neighborhood, the street full of homes refracts and repeats like an image in two mirrors facing each other, glowering at them from under a sky full of perfectly cloud-shaped clouds. It’s immediately clear the suburb is infinite, turning Tom and Gemma in loops when they try to escape. There are no neighbors and only a peculiar and annoying child to keep them company. Their isolation adds to the groaning weight of their circumstances and the strangeness of being alone in an infinite realm of houses puts the couple’s relationship in jeopardy. Monochrome, spiraling, nonsensical.
While Vivarium certainly didn’t win any Oscars, it’s probably the most similar in content and character to The Backrooms. It turns suburbia into a caricature, instilling in the audience the age-old fear of mundanity and unwalkable cities. Its simplistic aesthetic and tension create a world that lovers of the liminal will no doubt enjoy.
3. Persona (1966)
Stream on: The Criterion Collection, MAX & Hulu
Persona is a stunning early example of uncanniness in film. It centers on two women: one, a mysterious actress who has suffered some kind of breakdown and refuses to speak, and the other, her nurse. The movie’s first few moments treat the audience to disorienting visuals, jump cuts, and juxtaposition, setting us on edge before witnessing the rest. It is also entirely in black and white, leaning on contrast to create a striking visual character.
For a film produced in the 60s, part of the uncanniness comes from the open subversion of norms with regard to gender and sexuality. Freud’s (I know, I know; walk with me here) definition of uncanniness included seeing something one feels they are not supposed to see, usually in the context of sexuality or emotionality breaching unspoken rules of conduct in certain kinds of relationships; culture, social routines, and reproductive bonds often influence triggers for the state of uncanniness, and I think that’s the nerve Persona attempted to whack with a wet towel. To modern audiences, some elements of its “horror” may not strike as hard as they once did, but the film still has much to offer in terms of production, performance, and cinematography.
Without spoiling too much, certain points in the plot leave us with an incomplete understanding of what is happening in the characters’ objective reality, which forces us to wrestle with questions about the protagonists’ minds and how those questions apply to ourselves. The breakdown of their psychology contributes to themes of madness and isolation, much like The Backrooms promises to.
4. Inland Empire (2006)
In an already confounding body of work, Lynch’s dream-logic magnum opus wins the day for the most nonsensical of all. In five or six somewhat indistinct narrative arcs, Lynch drags the audience through a three-hour odyssey of nightmarish terror. Lynch’s command of camera angles and lighting imbue his work with the uncanniness we’re looking for. Shot almost–if not entirely–on handheld digital camera, Inland Empire wears the texture of a found footage documentary on the inner workings of Hollywood, encrusted with gems of distorted faces, creepy animal masks, and disjointed dialogue. It contains a few symbolic consistencies that guide the audience through the experience, which enhances the impression that the film renders visible a foreign stream of consciousness.
Some of the first half of the movie takes place on a film set, which mimics The Backrooms in unexpected ways. There are convincing outer faces of buildings indoors, doorways that lead to nothing, strange arrangements of spaces, and rooms carefully and intentionally manufactured without livability in mind. Lynch also plays with time, twisting the several narratives into nonlinear puzzles. While Inland Empire may not mirror The Backrooms in terms of style or substance, it’s a treat for lovers of the experimental and uncanny. And, if nothing else, the one and only true jumpscare in the film makes the trek through it all worth it.
Honorable mentions, otherwise known as delightful works I couldn’t fit onto this list
- The Backrooms (original online series)
- I Saw the TV Glow (2020)
- Pulse (2006)
- I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
- Images (1972)