The Liminal Space of the Mind

spoilers

According to author Janine Ungvarsky:

“Liminality is a concept that originates from anthropology and psychology, referring to the transitional phase individuals experience when moving between two distinct stages of life. Often described as being ‘betwixt and between,’ liminality embodies a state of uncertainty and transformation, typically triggered by significant life events such as job loss, marriage, or the death of a loved one. The term derives from the Latin word ‘limen,’ meaning "threshold," symbolizing the point of transition from one existence to another.”

Psychology plays a central role in Backrooms as Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) confides in his therapist about his ex wife, alcoholism, and failed ambitions of becoming an architect. (It is quite a full circle moment for Ejiofor to star in both the gut-wrenching historical epic and 2014 Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave as well as the directorial debut of a filmmaker born in 2005.) The words of his therapist’s book “The Window Within” narrate over certain bits and remind you of the parallel between the mind and the backrooms that Kane Parsons is going for:

"As you walk through life, the untrained mind accumulates loops, habits, behaviors, to keep you drifting in circles. Creating the same problems, reaching for the same solutions. over, and over, again. Still, it's the neural pathway of least resistance." 

A liminal space, in internet aesthetics, is the abandoned and the uncanny emptiness that evoke a sense of quiet eeriness and mystery, as if there was once life here in this ordinary place that is no longer. It’s that ordinary and familiar nature of these images that make it so unsettling, like a faded memory of a hallway's vacant corridors in your old elementary school, the garish colors of a 90s McDonald's play place entombed in loneliness, or the yellowed-fluorescent lit, wallpapered backrooms of a furniture store. 

The direction of the opening scene with its shaky, handheld camera work and the grainy textures of the VHS tape sets a thrilling hook and reminds you what made the Blair Witch Project such an innovative piece of found footage horror nearly 30 years ago. And the tension of these POV scenes are some of the best in the entire film. But for a period piece Backrooms feels like a Gen Z’er cosplaying as the early 90s. All the set pieces are there and screaming at you like “Hey look a CRTV and an ‘End Apartheid’ shirt because we’re in the 90s man”, but the decade doesn’t feel quite lived in. The intention of setting it in this decade is to try and evoke a greater sense of abandonment, distance, and eeriness which I do appreciate but comes off feeling more like a gimmick. Everything is just too clean and crisp when you shoot on digital. 

The Lost Image from Oshkosh, Wisconsin

Creepypastas, the early 2010’s internet version of telling spooky stories around the campfire—or copying and pasting them, hence the name, are becoming quite nostalgic for some. Although some are creative in concept I was never one for the fictionality of creepypastas. I do however enjoy a good tale of lost media, and this one I can recall from some one random YouTube rabbit hole in the past.

 In 2019 the idea of the Backrooms first came to be in a thread on 4chan’s paranormal board asking people to post “disquieting images that just feel off”, and accompanied with an image of a vacant yellowed space. An anonymous user replied to it giving the image his own lore about “the Backrooms” being this liminal entryway into another word. 

“If you're not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, where it's nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in. God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.” - Anonymous, May 13, 2019

The internet lore spread across 4chan and its own dedicated subreddit, and later in 2022 Kane Parsons expanded the idea into a YouTube miniseries. But for all this time one question persisted: where did that original image come from? Discord servers of online sleuths popped up to investigate every lead in tracking down the origin of that hauntingly ordinary looking abandoned room. 

The Discord detectives hit a breakthrough in 2024 when they traced the image via the Wayback Machine to an archived blog page from March, 2003. The new tenant in a former furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin had undergone renovations on the building and had uploaded progress pictures to the company blog. Something so pedestrian as before and after pictures of water damage restoration in a midwestern hobby shop would go on to inspire one of the internet’s most well explored paranormal stories, a video game, and a feature film.

I found myself leaving the theater—a theater still packed a week after release— asking for just 20 more minutes. To give some more context to Clark’s descent into madness, this ASync facility Mary steps into, what her own past connection to this world is and the significance of the hand print in the cement, and how exactly does grief, trauma, and other forms of memory shape this dimension? Is this some sort of commentary on AI about the dystopian nature of a reality that is just an uncanny, unhuman regurgitation of all that exists? Or is it a manifestation of consciousness and existential dread? I’m sure all of the answers to these questions can be gathered from Kane Parson’s actual YouTube series and good Reddit thread (I chose the latter).

I wage a war within myself to be as least pretentious as possible when chopping it up about movies. And I feel that for all the criticism this film may warrant about its abrupt ending, I am still glad at the end of the day that new and creative ideas are getting attention. Hollywood throwing money at young internet creators I believe is a net positive for the scene and a breaking of the chain of producer connections and patronage. But we shall see what the future holds, and pray the powers that be do not fund an IShowSpeed movie or whatever the fuck kid’s are watching. Keep your eyes sharp, my fellow film lovers.