Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve) in 'Backrooms'
A24
There’s been a disruption at the box office lately—have you felt it?
Backrooms, A24’s horror hit from 20-year-old Kane Parsons, grapples with an idea that the box office is still reckoning with—the slow death of nostalgia.
There seems to be another “vibe shift” on the way, and hints of the transformation can be seen in the Backrooms, both the original internet folklore and A24’s film.
As a concept, the Backrooms is fairly open to interpretation, but the dreary office underworld always contains an element of nostalgia, framed as a malevolent force.
The success of films like Backrooms indicates that nostalgia culture is decaying—the story even serves as a parable, depicting the terrible consequences of rejecting the future.
The explosive success of low-budget horror films Obsession and Backrooms (both directed by Gen Z YouTubers), contrasts with the relatively weak box office performance of The Mandalorian and Grogu, and the catastrophic failure of Masters of the Universe.
A new Star Wars film used to be a major event, something that would at least spark discussion—The Mandalorian and Grogu didn’t even ignite a culture war.
Decline is perhaps inevitable for a franchise born in 1977, and one could say the same for Masters of the Universe, a reboot based on the “He-Man” toyline from the 80’s, firmly rejected by young viewers.
Scary Movie 6, another nostalgia sequel, boasted a strong opening, but experienced a severe drop on its second weekend.
It’s still too early to herald the death of nostalgia—the upcoming Toy Story 5 is projected to break records—but cracks are starting to appear in the old rose-tinted glasses.
Today’s horror trends are often inspired by nostalgia, and the Backrooms is no different—young creators are starting to view cultural stagnation as a storytelling tool.
The Backrooms, along with liminal spaces, often depict fragments of a world that no longer exists, blending childhood memories and retro aesthetics into a dreamy haze, an infinite space where one can lose themselves.
Even the original image that first inspired the Backrooms is a fossilized artifact, plucked from a dead blog and reposted on 4chan. It’s a photo snapped by a digital camera, documenting the renovation of an old furniture store.
It’s not an office space, despite being mistaken for one—open-space offices were already outdated by the time the original idea spread across the internet.
Even the sickly yellow tint of the Backrooms can be attributed to outdated tech, the white balance of the digital camera being slightly off.
The endless maze of the Backrooms, lurking behind the unstable walls of our reality, can be interpreted as a manifestation of the past, waiting to devour lost souls of the present.
Kane Parsons Backrooms leans into this interpretation.
The film is set in the nineties, and the tacky, retro designs of the furniture store leading into the Backrooms are endlessly replicated within the walls of the otherworld.
The Backrooms seem to remember (and misremember) the real world, creating echoes of echoes, prompting comparisons to the uncanny outputs of generative AI.
The protagonist of the film, Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), withdraws into the Backrooms, choosing a stagnant life, as though he prefers the artificial allure of nostalgia to the present, rejecting his future entirely.
The evils of nostalgia even appear in Obsession, the cursed wish coming from the “One-Wish Willow,” a mysterious, magical object in retro packaging.
For Gen Z creators, raised in a cultural landscape cluttered with the artifacts of their parent’s childhood (Ghostbusters, Jurassic Park and Star Wars all refuse to die), the nostalgic past might well seem like an endless labyrinth.
If the Backrooms represent the endless winding corridors of nostalgia, young creators seem set on finding a way out.
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