Backrooms

Out on a liminal

Mostly when conversations turn to backrooms, we’re talking about spaces where things are plotted and/or happen beneath the wider radar — a place where determined idealists find a way to circumvent obstacles, or, more likely, a place of corrupt and self-serving “backroom deals.” Yet the ever-expanding, maze-like backrooms of this simultaneously open-spaced and claustrophobic horror film represents neither pole of those human behaviors; rather, like the humungous fungus stretching 3.7 square miles beneath an Oregon forest, the backrooms that some wary individuals find their way to here have their own function, own life, own reason to be that transcends anything so mundane as deals. The question those exploring them would be well to ask as they delve deeper into the clean, well-lit abyss isn’t so much “What is its purpose?” but “Why do I believe it has a purpose?”