The 2026 indie-horror film Backrooms has become a cultural sensation, achieving worldwide commercial success and grossing over 300 million dollars at the box office. A central reason for the film’s popularity is its’ unsettling set design that evokes fear, nostalgia, and discomfort in viewers. Backrooms uses what are known as “liminal spaces” to achieve this effect.
Meridian University defines the term “liminal spaces” as “a place of transition, an in-between space that exists on the boundary of what came before and what has not yet arrived.” Long and endless hallways, empty rooms with strange architecture, and areas where time can’t beimmediately identified are all examples of liminal spaces.
Given the size and lack of visual development of One Market; which used to be a shopping mall until Laurier purchased it for the Brantford Campus in 2014, many of the shots we captured feel eerily similar to those depicted in ‘Backrooms’.
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