I accidentally arrived 30 minutes early to the opening-night showing of A24’s “Backrooms” at the Santa Cruz Cinema in downtown Santa Cruz. The room was dark, empty and silent.
Every seat sat vacant, the screen blank and there were no previews. There were no conversations, no rustling popcorn bags and no reminders that I was in a place designed for crowds. I checked my digital ticket and realized my mistake. The movie hadn’t started because I was simply too early.
But sitting there alone, it didn’t feel like a mistake.
It felt like I had accidentally wandered into a liminal space.
The concept of liminality sits at the heart of “Backrooms.” Liminal spaces are places meant for transition rather than occupation. Airports at 3 am, empty hallways, even a shopping mall after closing. Places that exist between destinations. Familiar environments stripped of the people who give them purpose.
As I sat in that empty theater, I felt the strange discomfort that makes liminal spaces so compelling. Nothing was technically wrong. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Yet the absence of people made the room feel frozen in time, as though I had arrived somewhere I wasn’t meant to see.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. Before watching a film about someone stumbling into a place that shouldn’t exist, I found myself sitting in a space that felt detached from reality.
That feeling was the perfect introduction to “Backrooms.”
The film follows Clark, the lonely and deeply flawed owner of a failing furniture store who accidentally discovers a place that shouldn’t exist—but somehow does. Rather than relying on traditional horror conventions, “Backrooms” builds its tension through atmosphere, isolation and the unsettling feeling that something about the environment is fundamentally wrong.
Part of what makes “Backrooms” especially compelling for local audiences, is that the story unfolds in familiar territory. The film is set in the Santa Clara Valley at Capitol Expressway and McKee Road in East San Jose—just off Interstate 680. Before seeing the movie, I reached out to my followers on Instagram and TikTok and told them I wanted to fully lean into the experience by watching it somewhere that already felt liminal. Dozens of people suggested Eastridge Mall, whose quieter atmosphere has earned a reputation among locals for feeling oddly suspended in time. I loved the idea, but I couldn’t secure tickets there at the last minute and ended up attending a showing in Santa Cruz instead. As it turned out, arriving 30 minutes early to an empty theater gave me the exact unsettling experience I had been searching for all along.
What makes the film effective is that it taps into a fear most viewers already carry with them. We’ve all experienced moments when a familiar place suddenly feels unfamiliar. We’ve all walked through a building after hours or found ourselves alone somewhere normally crowded and felt a brief moment of unease.
The movie also reminded me that liminal spaces are often much closer than we think. In the Santa Cruz Mountains, Holy City remains one of the region’s most intriguing examples. Once a bustling roadside attraction and home to one of the area’s most infamous cults, it now exists largely as a relic of another era. The Los Gatan recently revisited its strange history, and last year I created a three-part series on my social media accounts exploring the story behind the abandoned community. Places like Holy City continue to fascinate, because they feel suspended between past and present.
What lingered with me most wasn’t a particular scene or scare. It was the way the movie changed how I looked at ordinary spaces afterward. Long empty hallways. Late nights at the office after everyone has gone home. The strange quiet of an airport after a red-eye flight. Places I had passed through hundreds of times suddenly felt different.
The movie leaves your brain operating in a state of hypervigilance. You begin noticing details you normally ignore. Empty corners. Endless corridors. Rooms that feel too quiet. The spaces between destinations become just as interesting as the destinations themselves.
If you’re someone who enjoys immersive experiences, I recommend making the environment part of the movie. See the last showing in a mall so you have to walk through dimly lit corridors after everything has closed. Park far enough away that you cross an empty lot illuminated only by scattered lamps. Or show up 30 minutes early, like I did, and sit alone in a theater before the audience arrives.
You might discover that the movie starts long before the opening scene.
Backrooms will screen at the Los Gatos Theatre at 2pm, 5pm and 8pm on Wednesday and Thursday. Additional listings can be found at cineluxtheatres.com.
Really appreciate the time and effort you put into writing this. It’s clear, well-structured, and genuinely enjoyable to read.
I like how you don’t just share information, but actually give context and feeling behind it — that makes it much more useful and memorable than a typical guide. You can tell it’s written from real experience, not just copied research.
Thanks for sharing this — it’s the kind of content that actually adds value and makes the topic easier to understand 👍