The other night, my husband asked me to watch all the YouTube hype on
"Backrooms". I was like, "What's backrooms?" And then... it all clicked. And I cannot unsee it.
Last month A24 released the Backrooms trailer. Within 24 hours, it became the most-viewed trailer in A24's history. This weekend, the movie premiered.
The director, Kane Parsons, is 20. The youngest filmmaker ever to helm a major studio production. Younger than Orson Welles. Younger than John Singleton. Bloomberg published a think piece on whether the film is testing the future of horror itself.
Nearly every outlet led with the age story. But the age isn't the interesting part. It's his keen understanding of liminal space.
What's interesting is what Parsons, and before him, the Severance production design team, and before them, architects and environmental psychologists, going back decades, actually understood about how human beings respond to space.
The Backrooms premise is almost aggressively simple: fluorescent lights, yellow-tinted walls, damp carpet, a ceiling that sits slightly too low, corridors that extend just past the point of comfort.
"The dread is in the architecture. No monster. No plot device. Just a room you cannot leave that was never designed to hold you."
The set design IS the thesis. Now think of a large conference. In a larger convention center. With long hallways. Ballrooms that all blend into their horrendous floral carpets. Bad lighting. No seats in the common pathways. People eating soggy lunchbox sandwiches sitting on the floor.
You've been there. And you wonder why you pay thousands of dollars to do it regularly.
Your attendees walk into your event, and within 90 seconds, something has already been communicated. And event designers/producers/organizers hold the power to control feelings.
You can either design the feeling or inherit one.
What most organizations hand out to their attendees:
- Registration lines that turn arrivals into a queue reminiscent of airport security
- An 8-foot ballroom ceiling that flattens energy before the first session
- A stage platform that puts the speaker in authority over a passive, seated room
- Blah. Boring. Cruel.
The room has already told people whether their presence matters. Whether something different is possible here, or whether this is just another version of a space they've sat in a hundred times.
Corporate America has been building its own version of The Backrooms for years. Same carpet. Different agenda.
A 20-year-old understood that well enough to break records.
Most teams don't ask what their space is communicating until the post-event "what did you think about the venue" survey.
Keep thinking, keep winking,
— Denise
Twofold Story: Helping you build journeys, not agendas.
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