TRANSCRIPT HostWelcome to the Rough Cut Journal podcast. I’m your host, Gaby Jimenez. On this episode, we’re looking at director Kane Parsons 2026 film The Backrooms, a feature film released by A24, Set in 1991, the film opens with grainy found footage. A cameraman is attacked by an unseen force inside a bland corporate office and a windowless room with yellow wallpaper, buzzing fluorescent lights and damp carpet. Drawing from internet lore, the backrooms turns this sterile, mass produced office space into the main horror element ripe with residual anxiety. But strip away the sci fi horror and a larger, everyday theme emerges. The architectural legacy of cookie cutter strip malls office parks and shopping centers built fast and cheap. These spaces look exactly the same whether you’re in Wisconsin or California. The reaction is almost universally unsettling, and in 1992, anthropologist Marc Auge described this as a non-police, which is defined as an interchangeable, mass produced, transient space like corporate lobbies, airports, malls, office blocks, so they lack enough unique history, identity, or organic social interaction to be considered true places. To understand why these places have such a psychological grip on us, I spoke to people who look closely at how human spaces are built and experienced. Camille, a city planner based in Long Beach, California, and Lisa, a grant writer based in Los Angeles. They share their own encounters with these non-places and how they connect back to real world commercial spaces around us. CamilleMy name is Camille Ora Nicole. I work as a city planner and I am based in Long Beach, California. The first place that pops in my head is empty mall. I guess a little bit from experience. I worked in a mall once, and it required me sometimes to be at the mall very early and being at a massive space like that with no people being there. Hearing all the echoes and knowing now that there is a behind the scenes to a mall is simultaneously really creepy and also really freeing because it’s like you could just walk around and do whatever you want, but also you kind of know in the back of your head that there should be people there. And that’s and that’s a little that’s a little unsettling. LisaMy name is Lisa Laney. I’m a grant writer based in Los Angeles. A time when I was alone in a space normally packed with people. The first thing that comes to mind is when I was younger, maybe 7 or 8, I would occasionally go into the office with my dad if he had to work late, my sister and I would play around in the cubicle while he was working, I do remember one time going to the bathroom, it was through a door into a different hallway, and that felt eerie because It was cut off from the area where there were people, that felt very isolated and wrong, like, you’re not supposed to be there. HostStripped of daily human activity, these vacant spaces enter the uncanny valley, that quiet, ominous sensation when something looks almost normal but feels completely off. LisaIt’s almost like an uncanny valley feeling. And maybe that’s not the exact metaphor, but that sense of there should be people here and there’s not, it feels very like a sense of abandonment HostAbandonment sets in and suddenly a large, empty space feels suspicious with no people or nature to bring it to life. Your eyes start tracing the angles of the room, looking for signs of life or for whatever is hiding just out of sight. CamilleThere should be people there and when you’re in a space like that, there’s too many corners for something to be lurking. And, you know, there probably isn’t anyone lurking there, but you never know. It’s such a large space, like, especially like an empty office. That has a lot of cubicles. There could be anyone in those cubicles. There could be someone under the desk, and there could be someone in a closet, and that’s kind of unsettling to think about.HostThe gut reaction to an empty building gets even stronger when the lights stay on, but nobody’s inside. LisaThe other experience or memory I have, it’s always feeling a very strong response to empty storefronts, like if you’re passing by late at night and there’s still lights on, but it’s not well-lit and it’s completely empty. That’s the thing that feels, you know, to me, it gives me a sick feeling in my stomach because it’s just feels so wrong. Like there should be people in there, especially if there’s lights on. Like if it’s completely dark, that’s normal. But if there’s a light on but no one’s there. Just feels like, where did the people go?HostIn the 90s, malls and toy stores were everywhere. As the spaces became more sparse and empty, an unsettling tension developed between warm nostalgia and the creepy feeling of being watched. CamilleI think that’s something that’s separate from, like, an empty mall or an office that that is rooted in nostalgia when it comes to liminal spaces and going towards that like creepy feeling is toy stores. You know, it’s the same thing where you kind of feel like it’s an empty space. So it could be lurking behind the corners. But now, instead of it being an empty space with someone lurking around the corners, it’s an empty space full of toys with which includes dolls and action figures. So, it’s something about about the eyes like it almost feels like something or someone could be watching you. HostBut to trigger that specific brand of dread, the space must belong to the past. A brand new empty building is just waiting for tenants, but a once thriving mall, now empty and frozen in time, feels like humanity has left it behind. LisaYou think about liminal spaces that are like those videos of empty malls that have music playing over them, but it’s that 90s esthetic or a different time period that kind of contributes to it, too, because if you’re in a brand new space, it doesn’t have that sense of abandonment. It feels, new. So someone must have been here recently. But if it’s an older space a very dated feeling, you get the sense that it could have been abandoned for a very long time. HostIn the film Back Rooms, the action is captured on a lo-fi digital tape. This static also feeds into our nostalgia. The grainy footage itself adds a layer of isolation, trapping these spaces behind a wall of static fuzz. CamilleI love the VHS. Like that texture, because even though it can be creepy, it’s also super, super nostalgic, because I grew up with those box televisions and with having to change the little rabbit ears and with videotapes seeing it as kind of super comforting, and then you turn it into something that’s a little scary, and it really does succeed at that effect of something being both nostalgic and comforting and warm, but also being like what’s going on is the same with Toy Story. Like, Toy Story is fun, but it’s also kind of creepy. You know, talking about this, it’s almost as if they were priming us for liminal spaces as an adult. HostIt feels like a glitch in our everyday reality. These spaces were built for us to pass through, not to live in. That creates a loop where comfort and dread run right alongside each other, and we are primed for it. Next time. You walk through a quiet strip mall or an empty office lobby. Pause for a second. It’s a quiet reminder that beyond the familiar templates of our everyday lives, there’s always a hidden space within a space, (echo)Thank you for listening to the Rough Cut Journal podcast. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit milieumedia.substack.com
