The Backrooms (2022) follows a cameraman who finds himself clipped into the backrooms, and this short records his journey wandering around the liminal spaces. I can't praise this short enough, the legend of the backrooms is one of my biggest fears and I hope to see Kane Parsons make something like this again as it shows great potential!
This short was incredibly well-made and felt so real, the found footage element was perfect and really added to the immersion. For me, this film perfectly captures the horrors of liminal spaces.
Visually, this film was great too. The colour palettes were sickly, eerie and unnerving. It definitely wasn't pleasing to the eye but this is exactly why it's so horrifying. The backrooms look so ominous and unsettling yet also nostalgic and strangely familiar.
Possibly the most effective element of the short in my opinion was the sound design. It gave me chills on numerous occasions and really shook me to the core. The static hum mixed with the loud, horrendous noises from the creature creates an absolute nightmare.
Up until seeing the entity, the short builds the tension insanely well. Every corner turned I found myself more on edge and nervous for what was to come.
Lastly, the creature itself was designed to be simple, but super effective and weirdly terrifying. This short film scared me more in ten minutes than most feature length horror films do in two hours.