So you sat through Kane Parsons’ Backrooms and walked out feeling weird about your own office building. Yeah, I get it. Some of us couldn’t look at fluorescent lighting the same way for about a week.
If you don’t know the premise yet: A24’s take on the viral creepypasta follows a guy (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who clips through reality inside a furniture showroom — of all the mundane places — and gets stuck in those infamous endless yellow rooms. Buzzing lights, humming carpet, that low droning sound you can’t quite place. His therapist (Renate Reinsve) goes in after him, and the two of them get to deal with architecture that won’t stay put, the slow rot of doing the same thing forever, and whatever’s moving around in the static.
What makes it land is that it doesn’t lean on jump scares. It just lets the wrongness of the space do the heavy lifting.
If that’s the itch you’re trying to scratch, here are ten films that work the same nerve. Not all of them are about literal backrooms — but they all understand that the scariest place is a familiar one that’s somehow turned against you.
1. Skinamarink (2022)
Honestly, this is the closest thing we had to Backrooms before Backrooms. Kyle Edward Ball plants you in a dark suburban house at night, and then the doors and windows just… start vanishing. Two little kids drift through hallways while voices whisper and shadows do things shadows shouldn’t.
It was made for almost no money, shot mostly on static cameras with a grainy VHS look — and that cheapness is exactly why it works. Fair warning, though: this one is divisive. You’ll either be hypnotized or bored out of your skull. There’s not much middle ground.
Trailer: Skinamarink – Official Trailer
2. Vivarium (2019)
Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots play a couple touring a new housing development, and then they can’t leave. Every identical green-roofed house loops them right back to where they started, under a fake-looking yellow sky. It’s less “monster in the dark” and more “the slow horror of being trapped in suburbia forever.” If the existential repetition of the Backrooms got to you, this nails that specific dread.
Trailer: Vivarium Official Trailer
3. Cube (1997)
A scrappy Canadian cult favorite. Strangers wake up inside a maze of identical cube rooms, some of which are rigged to kill you in creative ways. No explanation, no exit, just impossible geometry and people slowly turning on each other. The effects are dated and the acting is… of its time, but the core idea is so clean it’s been copied for decades.
Trailer: Cube (1997) Trailer
4. The Shining (1980)
The granddaddy of all “this building is wrong” movies. Kubrick traps the Torrance family in the empty Overlook Hotel for winter, and those long Steadicam glides down silent corridors basically invented the visual language Backrooms runs on. Every modern liminal horror owes this one a debt, whether it admits it or not.
Trailer: The Shining – Official Trailer (1980)
5. Exit 8 (2025)
Based on the indie game, this one’s a tight little exercise in dread. A man is stuck in a looping underground subway passage, and the only way out is to notice when something — anything — is off. Miss the anomaly, and you start over. It’s simple, it’s stressful, and it gets the “mundane transit space gone wrong” feeling exactly right.
Trailer: EXIT 8 – Official Trailer
6. Lost Highway (1997)
This is where things get properly Lynchian. A man’s reality fractures into loops and identity swaps, with rooms and hallways rearranging themselves to dream logic. Don’t go in expecting answers — go in for the mood. It’s confusing on purpose, and that’s the point.
Trailer: Lost Highway (1997) Trailer
https://youtu.be/INuQw8uexyo?si=igD57rnLpB7Oc5-4
7. As Above, So Below (2014)
A found-footage descent into the Paris catacombs that stops being a normal cave-crawl and turns into something much stranger. The tunnels start defying physics, time bends, and the characters’ own guilt comes crawling out of the walls. The claustrophobia alone is worth the price of admission.
Trailer: As Above, So Below Official Trailer
8. Session 9 (2001)
A slow burn, this one. A hazmat crew takes a job cleaning out an abandoned asylum, and the sheer dead weight of all those empty rooms starts working on them. There’s barely any gore — the building does most of the damage. The real-life Danvers State Hospital location adds a layer you can’t fake on a set.
Trailer: Session 9 (2001) Official Trailer
9. The Langoliers (1995)
Okay, the CGI hasn’t aged a day — it’s aged about forty. But the concept, lifted from a Stephen King novella, is pure liminal nightmare fuel: passengers wake on a plane to find the world emptied out, time having quietly moved on without them. Those silent, lifeless airports hit that “right place, completely wrong” note perfectly. Watch it for the ideas, forgive the effects.
Trailer: The Langoliers Trailer Remastered
10. Inland Empire (2006)
The deep end. Lynch’s three-hour fever dream sends Laura Dern wandering through Hollywood soundstages, alternate selves, and corridors that never quite resolve. It’s dense and exhausting and not for everyone — but if you want fractured space taken to its absolute limit, nothing else really compares.
Trailer: INLAND EMPIRE Official Trailer
Where to Start
Not sure where to dive in? Here’s how I’d play it:
Want the closest match to Backrooms? Start with Skinamarink or Vivarium.
Want actual plot and tension to hold onto? Go with Cube or As Above, So Below.
Ready to get weird and stay weird? Save The Shining, Lost Highway, and Inland Empire for a night when your brain is up for the fight.
The common thread through all of these is that primal discomfort Backrooms weaponizes so well — the idea that a place built to feel safe can become endless, hostile, and quietly alive. Whether you’re into slow experimental dread, found-footage panic, or full-blown psychological labyrinths, there’s something on this list to feed the feeling.
So — what did you make of Backrooms? Which of these are you cueing up first, and what did I miss? Drop your favorite liminal or architectural horror picks in the comments. I’m always adding to the list.