Re:'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic
by SaberTail on Thursday April 02, 2026 @02:16PM
(#47618119)
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.
edit: Another thing I will say is that I've noticed both HoL and Backrooms seem to act like a kind of shibboleth for a particular demographic (not even really the same demographic) and you often see this in how people write/talk about both. I think it maybe stems from how dense/unapproachable the two works are, how innocuous they seem on the surface such that you really have to sink some effort to get at them.