The Backrooms

I recently watched Backrooms, and I found it confusing, disturbing, and deeply unsettling in the best possible way.

The premise: an endless maze of identical rooms. Same fluorescent ceiling tiles. Same yellowed carpet. Same hum. No landmarks. No hierarchy. No way to know where you are, where you've been, or where you're going.

It's horror. But as an architect and interior designer, I couldn't stop thinking that I've seen the budget version of this film. In real life. In real buildings.

The conversation usually goes something like this:

"Can we use the same flooring throughout? Same wall color across all floors? It simplifies procurement and reduces cost."

And technically? Yes. It does.

But what the spreadsheet doesn't capture is what happens to the people inside. When every corridor looks the same, wayfinding breaks down. When every floor feels identical, spatial memory fails. When there are no visual cues to anchor you, no differentiation by material, color, texture, or light, you lose your sense of place. You disorient. You feel, on some level, slightly wrong.

The Backrooms works as horror precisely because it takes that logic to its conclusion. The monster isn't a creature. The monster is sameness. It's the complete erasure of spatial identity.

Good interior design isn't decoration. It's orientation. It's the material language that tells people where they are, what this place is for, and quietly, almost subconsciously that they matter enough to be in a place that was thought about.

Budget decisions have consequences that live in the body, not the budget line.

That's worth remembering before you approve the value engineering report!

(Image is from the movie's trailer on youtube)