Trailer Backrooms

[Corinnguard]

A walk in the countryside by yourself is pretty liminal too. I have had walks where I just stop and can hear the silence. I hear the wind blowing through the trees. I hear the occasional birdsong. The soft rustle of my clothing. But I don't hear anything else. Where is everybody? Am I truly alone?

 

[overgeeked]

Parking garages for malls that have gone out of business, speaking from personal experience, especially given how echoey they are. Was that a rat several floors away? Is someone on this floor with me? And why did I think parking here to avoid fees on the street was a good idea, given how late I'd be coming back to my car?

My favorite so far was when I worked at a university library as a student worker. There was an old, unused library in another building where we stored the lower-circulation books. The building was in use, but the library was closed off and locked up. Walk out of an active library, walk across an active campus, walk through an active building, pass through a single door and you're suddenly in a ghost town. Huge, multi-floor space with a million+ books on shelves and not another soul. Occasionally you'd get odd sounds from the rest of the building filtering in. Gave it a real haunted vibe. Spooked everyone else. They refused to go alone. I took my lunches there.

It's one reason I love The Stygian Library so much.

 

[Deset Gled]

Just saw it. Very good overall, and very enjoyable for my kids who are at the right age to have followed backrooms internet stuff for a few years but also be old enough to handle an R rated movie. I'd recommend seeing it.

That being said, IMNSHO it also falls short of great, and would not make it on any of my "best of" lists. Some key horror sins, missed opportunities, pulled punches, or however you want to label things. Maybe I've just seen too many horror movies at this point. All that being said, I'd be very welcome to a sequel at any budget point.

 

[cranberry]

This looks pretty cool. However I thought once you walked through, you couldn't go back to normal space the way you entered, like the first guy did.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Just saw it. Very good overall, and very enjoyable for my kids who are at the right age to have followed backrooms internet stuff for a few years but also be old enough to handle an R rated movie. I'd recommend seeing it.

That being said, IMNSHO it also falls short of great, and would not make it on any of my "best of" lists. Some key horror sins, missed opportunities, pulled punches, or however you want to label things. Maybe I've just seen too many horror movies at this point. All that being said, I'd be very welcome to a sequel at any budget point.

It'll be interesting to compare this with Exit 8, which I'm less familiar with, but which seems to be approaching the same idea from a similar angle.

 

[Deset Gled]

This looks pretty cool. However I thought once you walked through, you couldn't go back to normal space the way you entered, like the first guy did.

Well, any discussion of this will be spoilers to what happens in the movie, so...

Spoiler: Don't read until after you watch

In the actual movie, the guy appears to go in and come back out again the same way. But if you pay close attention to details, it is noticeable that the area he "leaves" from is not actually the same place he entered. This is never directly addressed, and the details are small enough that I had to explain them to my kids after the movie was over.

So, the entire thing is a giant unreliable narrator situation. I'm also pretty sure the creators are banking on YouTube and TikTok click bait videos to be made about "The top 10 things you missed the first time you watched The Backrooms".

 

[Corinnguard]

This looks pretty cool. However I thought once you walked through, you couldn't go back to normal space the way you entered, like the first guy did.

My brother told me that there are several different takes of the Backrooms on the internet where once you enter them, you can't leave.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My brother told me that there are several different takes of the Backrooms on the internet where once you enter them, you can't leave.

Three major takes, according to PBS' Monstrum.

 

[Corinnguard]

The Backrooms as a plane in D&D. It could be an echo of the Prime, just like the Feyworld and the Shadowfell. A Liminal Plane.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Backrooms as a plane in D&D. It could be an echo of the Prime, just like the Feyworld and the Shadowfell. A Liminal Plane.

Emmy Allen has you covered here:

The Stygian Library by SoulMuppet Publishing

A point-crawl adventure set in an infinite extraplanar library

soulmuppetpublishing.itch.io

The Gardens of Ynn by SoulMuppet Publishing

A point-crawl adventure set in an ever-shifting extradimensional garden.

soulmuppetpublishing.itch.io

Stygian Library starts off with a fun Discworld premise and then gets very dark and weird very fast, ending in a place a lot more like Wraith: The Oblivion. I ran Stygian Library as a Strixhaven adventure and it worked great.