I Went to Watch The Backrooms and I've Been There Before
By: Rylan B.
This past weekend I went to see The Backrooms during opening weekend.
As a chronically online citizen of the internet, this felt less like going to the movies and more like attending a family reunion.
The Backrooms have been around for years at this point. Long before Hollywood got involved, they were quietly lurking in the corners of the internet. A blurry image. A creepy forum post. A YouTube rabbit hole you clicked at 2:17 AM when you should have been asleep.
Then along came Kane Pixels.
If you've somehow avoided this corner of the internet, Kane Pixels is the YouTube creator responsible for turning a single unsettling image into one of the most recognizable internet horror franchises of the last decade.
As a fellow YouTube creator, I have a soft spot for stories like that.
There is something deeply satisfying about watching someone build something weird online and then forcing the rest of the world to acknowledge it.
So naturally I wanted to support the movie.
My fiancé and I grabbed tickets for a matinee showing at our local AMC.
The theater was packed with exactly the type of people you'd expect.
People who knew what liminal spaces were.
People who probably watched YouTube essays about abandoned malls for fun.
People who have definitely paused a video to read an obscure piece of internet lore hidden in the background.
My people.
About halfway through the film, our protagonist Clark enters the Backrooms.
Immediately something felt familiar.
The fluorescent lights.
The endless yellow glow.
The weird architectural cutouts in the walls.
The strange little nooks that clearly used to have a purpose but no longer do.
As Clark continued deeper into the Backrooms, I realized the genius behind the design.
The Backrooms aren't scary because they're strange.
They're scary because you've already been there.
Everyone has.
You've walked through buildings that looked exactly like this.
Empty office parks.
Dead shopping malls. Hotels that haven't been renovated since Clinton was president.
Former department stores desperately pretending they're still relevant.
The Backrooms don't feel alien.
They feel remembered.
And then, sitting there in the theater, it hit me.
I had literally been there before.
Not metaphorically.
Physically.
Back in April I stumbled across a YouTube video titled:
"CLOSING MACY'S at Northlake Mall | Store Tour | Tucker, GA (Atlanta)."
Immediately I clicked.
Because if you grew up in Atlanta during the late 90s and early 2000s, there's a decent chance your mother dragged you through Northlake Mall at least once.
Mine certainly did.
My mother treated malls the way some people treat national parks.
Every mall in Atlanta was eventually visited.
Every department store was explored.
Every food court was judged.
Watching the video felt like discovering an old photograph buried in a drawer.
The creator, TheMallFox, wandered through the nearly abandoned Macy's as merchandise slowly disappeared from the shelves.
Entire departments had been condensed into random corners.
Escalators carried shoppers into floors that barely contained products anymore.
Huge sections of the building sat empty.
Just open space.
Miles of it.
After watching the video, I turned to my fiancé and said something that, in hindsight, should have been a warning sign.
"We have to go."
Not because we needed anything.
Not because we were shopping.
Because I wanted to see it.
For the nostalgia.
And maybe for the discounts.
Mostly the nostalgia.
When we arrived, memories immediately came flooding back.
The smell.
The lighting.
The sounds of hangers scraping across metal clothing racks.
The faint echoes bouncing through oversized retail floors.
It felt familiar.
Until it didn't.
The deeper we walked, the stranger things became.
There were areas of the store that looked untouched by time.
Old dressing rooms with architectural choices nobody would make today.
Ceiling fans hanging over enormous empty spaces.
Walls clearly built around displays that no longer existed.
Large stretches of stained carpet leading absolutely nowhere.
Places that were obviously designed for crowds but now hosted maybe three confused shoppers and a lonely clearance rack.
At one point I found myself standing in the middle of a massive open floor that used to contain hundreds of products, now filled with unused mannequins.
And that's when it clicked.
This wasn't just an abandoned Macy's.
This was the Backrooms.
Not the monsters.
Not the internet mythology.
The actual feeling.
The Backrooms aren't about being lost in a maze.
They're about standing inside a place that has outlived its purpose.
A place where thousands of people once worked, shopped, laughed, complained, and existed.
And now it's just...
there.
Waiting.
Frozen.
The Backrooms resonate because they're not fictional.
They're a shared memory.
A dying mall.
An abandoned Sears.
A vacant Toys R Us.
An empty office floor.
A forgotten department store.
Places that were once filled with life and are now filled with echoes.
And maybe that's what makes them unsettling.
Not because they're empty.
But because we remember when they weren't.
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