Backrooms are a new horror genre weaned on the aesthetics of post-capitalist liminal space and the pervasive anomie in today’s global society. Within this genre, the human figure largely disappears, leaving architecture to take center stage.[…]
Traditionally associated with the descent of the classical hero into the underworld, katabasis has been reinterpreted [in the darkrooms genre] as a symbolic immersion into the deepest layers of the psyche, especially in the context of crisis or destabilization of the individual. In this sense, backroom environments can be understood as a contemporary reformulation of the original descent, a liminal space that materializes psychic disorientation through a distorted and unstable architecture.
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The repetition of endless offices and identical corridors evokes work environments dominated by repetition and depersonalization, where the illusion of infinite continuity disorients and dilutes workers’ agency. These scenarios evoke an architecture of endless productivity in which the individual is trapped in circular dynamics. Thus, backrooms can be understood as a metaphor for an economic system that has colonized not only physical space but also time and subjectivity.
— Rosa A. Cruz (A*Desk)
Why would someone fear empty spaces? Maybe if they knew that they were once full, and will likely never be that way again. That they are surrounded by people just a few years older that knew what it was to congregate in public all the time, for mundane reasons, and now public interaction is just a source of constant low-grade irritation where everything is understaffed and every shelf is understocked and the most reliable jobs involve moving packages around for people who can’t be bothered to leave home and be among others.
— Joshua Rivera (AV Club)
Synopsis: A strange doorway appears in the basement of a furniture showroom.