This is not the reaction of someone trying to keep an open mind, especially given that this isn't your usual cup of tea.

If you can get over your preconceived notions, I'd bet that you'd really enjoy this movie. It's extremely well executed and genuinely unsettling without ever getting gory, comedic or stupid.

I must be the weirdo for not wanting to feel unsettled like that. Doesn’t reality have enough unsettling stuff? Why pile onto that?

Give me comedy. Oh how I miss the 90 minute comedy movie.

What I find unsettling is that large swathes of mainstream society seem to consistently tack towards safe, unchallenging pablum. Why watch Parasite when you could watch a Happy Gilmore sequel?

I'm not saying this to be contrarian or give you a hard time. You should watch whatever makes you feel joy.

However, you shouldn't be surprised that for a lot of people, music, movies, television and books (I kid, I kid) that don't surprise, challenge, shock, confuse or inspire us feels vapid, hollow and intellectually insulting.

Long live the counterculture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJ8talVp90

I would rather go watch Weekend at Bernie's for the 100th time.

Amen to that!

Backrooms does have comedy, or at least comedic moments in it.

... I'm genuinely intrigued to hear what you found funny.

The original videos have tens of millions of views, became extremely popular memes online, and the movie is now the biggest-ever opening for an independent film. It's not niche, just a bottom-up internet-driven thing.

If it helps, there's some stratification that makes understanding it a bit confusing at first. There's basically four layers:

- The original 4chan post, a vaguely unsettling photo of an odd yellow room with an evocative caption about it being a vast realm outside reality that you can accidentally fall into to be stalked by unseen monsters.

- This post went viral and kicked off the "creepy liminal spaces" trend, where people found or created unnerving images of dark or abandoned places that are normally busy, like malls, schools, hotels, airports, etc.

- This evolved into the idea that the original yellow Backrooms is just one of infinitely-many connected environments/levels, each reflecting a different surreal aesthetic: tiled pools, children's playspaces, empty suburbs, etc. People also invented their own weird creatures that inhabited them (think the SCP Foundation stuff crossed with Five Nights at Freddy's). This resulted in an explosion of videos, wikis, and indie games exploring and expanding the concept.

- Kane Parsons created a more restrained and focused version of the above in his YouTube series, dispensing with the profusion of levels and monsters and drilling down on various first-person, found-footage explorations of the original Backrooms and glimpses of the mysterious company researching it. His take became by far the most popular, and landed him the director role for the film, which has turned out to be quite thoughtful and well-done.

I definitely recommend checking it out if you like surreal psychological horror. It's good even if you're not familiar with his web series.

A darkened theater with a glowing screen is precisely the sort of liminal space that is the topic of the movie. $20 to fall through the skin of the world for a couple hours? Seems like a no-brainer to me, given how rare and precious any liminal feeling at all is these days. And, if I go support this, maybe they’ll finally make a House of Leaves movie. One can dream.

I’d hardly consider a movie theater a liminal space. To me a theater is a destination, not a transitional area.

That said I do like your description of “falling through the skin of the world.” A+.

Try seeing the movie using https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48018066 and sit in the center back row so that you can see the entire empty room as you watch it. Obviously this doesn’t work if everyone does it their first time (though I see some empty seats just a half hour away, so for evening Sunday showings it might be solidly reliable); I bet it hits different the second time too :)

I'm 150 pages away from the end of my current book. At which point House of Leaves shall become my current book. I'm looking forward to the experience.

The faster you read House of Leaves the better the meta-experience.

I’ve lost three copies so far!

Another comment reminded me that there is a similar one called You Should Have Left.

Severance was inspired by the backrooms (not the other way around). And why do people feel the need to yuck someone else's yum?

Backrooms for me was definitely a yum!