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'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

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Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#51

Post by SaberTail »

nihakue wrote: post #39
endymion-light wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a bit of a convergent evolution House Of Leaves is similiar to Backrooms in a way - they represent the same kinds of horror but it's more like how Weird Fiction converged and inspired in the same way. There's a level of early slenderman there as well (in terms of a lot of the early slenderman horror being more about the horror of dreaming this entity into the real) I'd argue SCP Foundation is probably…

House Of Leaves was published in 2000 and Backrooms originates (as far as I can tell) from like 2011? Not that it's impossible that the ideas developed independently, but given how big a cult hit House of Leaves was I'd be very surprised if there wasn't some direct lineage. Not trying to gatekeep, it's just that the Backroom trailer was giving me _really distinct_ HoL vibes. I wonder if that's just the film mixing in…

I said to a few friends that the recent trailer felt like it could be for a House of Leaves movie. Different overall setting, but the "found footage" aspects, and the narrative over it, felt like they could be right out of the Navidson Record.

I don't have any real proof for this, but it feels like House of Leaves inspired a lot of the people making "found footage" and "creepypasta" stuff one the internet in the 2000s and early 2010s (SCP, Marble Hornets, Slender Man), and then that stuff came together to inspire the Backrooms.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#52

Post by bitwize »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #36

Dreams I've had (since a late teenager) have often taken place in some kind of architecture with infinite rooms, hallways… I wrote a computer game where a paper airplane flies room to room… It occurred to me that I was not indirectly surfacing this "endlessly scrolling building" that has recurred so often in what I suppose are nightmares(?). At the same time, memory being what it is, I worry that the reverse is true—…

For me it's cities—large, empty cities with little, if any, foot or vehicular traffic. Typically in the US or Australia and laid out accordingly, so not like Kowloon Walled City. But it's almost as if they're that way because my brain's "GPU" cannot render that many people or cars moving about. Sonetimes in these dreams I'm able to "teleport" to an interior location where there are people, and I'm fine.

Of course, it may be influenced by the fact that I spent ~15 years in the Boston area, and while New York is the city that never sleeps, Boston can get hauntingly empty late at night, or even on Sunday afternoon when most everything's closed...

For a great Kowloon-influenced atmospheric game, check out Stray.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#53

Post by calf »

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

"Memoryless" nostalgia is a real effect, and the word for it is anemoia:

https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/anemoia-nostalgi...

I watched the film Asteroid City last night, and the setting gave me this exact emotion.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#54

Post by colordrops »

nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

Naw, I'm older and the reason I'm into this sort of thing is that I have nostalgia about being in these sorts of spaces as a young child.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#55

Post by tsumnia »

amiga386 wrote: post #17

The article has a screenshot of the Stanley Parable, but misses an opportunity to reference Control (2019) which is much more directly influenced by the "liminal space" concept, and imagines a non-euclidian space called The Oldest House at 34 Thomas Street (a reference to the brutalist, windowless AT&T Long Lines skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street, New York City). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F74LLDhAhhI It also very…

I mean if we're trying to source where "liminal space" started, I'd like to add Portal and Portal 2 into the mix. It didn't have the surreal, creepy components because jump scare horror games like Five Nights hadn't been popularized yet but the entire second area of Portal 2 where you're introduced to Cave Johnson and the older Aperture Science HQ is very much "liminal".

If we want to go deeper, then I really think its Earthbound's absurdist take on childhood adventures with cultists, ghosts, dreamscapes, etc. but I think at that point I might as well say dice games influenced things.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#57

Post by saltcured »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #12
nkrisc wrote: post #8

I don’t really get the nostalgia angle as it seems as many of those who are into this kind of thing are too young to have ever been in such a space, let alone worked in one. I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. The illusion of infinitely twisting, identical corridors simply doesn’t hold up when you’re actually in a space like this, but only works…

> I’ve worked in a place like this that was well past its prime and though uncanny, it’s certainly not creepy. That's kinda more what the german concept of "unheimlich" is like. Even though it usually gets translated to English as "uncanny", it's more literally "un-homelike", when the familiar (home) turns unfamiliar (un-homelike) in an unexpected way. A common idea in that would be something like the discovery of a…

I think this whole genre flirts with Capgras Syndrome, the basic identity perception malfunction behind concepts like changelings and many other "exact duplicates" or "tampering" scenarios which have malice as an optional component.

I think it is something that people are aware of, perhaps subconsciously, from cultural exposure. But, I also think many (most?) people have at least some personal experience of a similar sort. Not the full-blown delusional state, but an anxious moment of having feelings of recognition or safety turn inside-out as they realize things are not as they first appeared.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#58

Post by hoherd »

amiga386 wrote: post #17

The article has a screenshot of the Stanley Parable, but misses an opportunity to reference Control (2019) which is much more directly influenced by the "liminal space" concept, and imagines a non-euclidian space called The Oldest House at 34 Thomas Street (a reference to the brutalist, windowless AT&T Long Lines skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street, New York City). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F74LLDhAhhI It also very…

Speaking of relevant games, there's also a Roblox game that my son has been into called Backrooms With Guns, and now I understand it a lot more.

https://en.namu.wiki/w/The%20Backrooms%20With%20Guns

I see others have mentioned Superliminal too, which was great.

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#59

Post by lxgr »

c-hendricks wrote: post #23

While the Backrooms movie trailer does make it look interesting, "Backrooms" / liminal horror / Skinamarink all have the same effect on me: nothing. I figure the split of people who find it scary vs those that don't is people who can "unscare" themselves. Like when I go into my basement at night, I can give myself the scare of "what if someone's watching ..." then go "nah" and I'm fine.

But can you “un-un-scare” yourself to enjoy liminal space horror?

Re: 'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic

#60

Post by lxgr »

squeedles wrote: post #11

Never got around to The Backrooms, but the follow on Oldest View / Rolling Giant series of videos are absolutely fantastic. It captures the tension between curiosity and dread perfectly, which seems to me what all of this fascination with liminal space is all about. On a technical level, his work is brilliant. With no budget, he puts me in a CGI space that I really can't tell is CGI, and invokes all of the feelings t…

I can only second this. I personally got more out of “The Oldest View” than I did out of maybe half of all commercial shows I recently watched, and I consider myself pretty picky.

At a meta level, there’s something amazing about fiction that feels like it ought to be constrained in what it can do by its budget/production capabilities and then constantly surprises you in execution.

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