[c-hendricks]

While the Backrooms movie trailer does make it look interesting, "Backrooms" / liminal horror / Skinamarink all have the same effect on me: nothing. I figure the split of people who find it scary vs those that don't is people who can "unscare" themselves.

Like when I go into my basement at night, I can give myself the scare of "what if someone's watching ..." then go "nah" and I'm fine.

[pavel_lishin]

I'm not sure if it's even meant to be scary. I think of the Backrooms as closer to the world of Piranesi, or the project that took a bunch of virtual-tours of apartments for rent, and aggregrated them all into a single mega-building.

[c-hendricks]

The Backrooms and Skinamarink are both classified as horror.

[squigz]

The movies, sure, but the Backrooms as a concept (and by extension liminal spaces in general) are not necessarily horror.

I don't find them "scary" but I do find them disconcerting.

[c-hendricks]

Backrooms started from a photo of a liminal space but was introduced from a creepypasta and a thread on a paranormal board, it's always been horror adjacent.

> God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you

[wincy]

I think it’s degrees, can you open a door halfway and stick your hand into a dark room without feeling creeped out? What if instead that liminal space is the temple in Indiana Jones and you’ve seen big spiders crawling around? It’s a fear of the unknown and we’re all tuned a little differently, I think we can all evoke this feeling it just takes more or less depending on the person and how much knowledge you have about the environment.

I worked at a Target in an old mall and there was a corporate office in the basement that had been abandoned years before due to black mold. I was responsible for doing a once a week check, just making sure nobody had been down there, that place majorly creeped me out even though I had the key and had a high degree of confidence nobody else was going to be down there. Also “black mold” evokes an image of a creeping horror even though rationally I know just going down there once a week isn’t going to give me some horrible respiratory illness.

[mpalmer]

I grew up in the 90s.

"Backrooms" and liminal spaces take me back to my early nightmares/kid fears, or the way they've stuck in my memory, at least.

I have the same sort of memory reaction/association with chillwave/vaporwave, in part because it's chopped and screwed in a way that suggests memories of vibes.

The teaser trailer narration mentions the spaces as something the place itself is remembering, and misremembering, and that actually made me sit up and listen, because maybe this is an existential Internet horror film which actually gets the existentialism right!

Totally get why it wouldn't click with some people, but man, it does with me.

[lxgr]

But can you “un-un-scare” yourself to enjoy liminal space horror?

[heavyset_go]

Skinamarink worked better as Heck. Shorter, too.

[bryanrasmussen]

that's definitely how they get you.