Salon Interprets 'Backrooms' Horror Film as Allegory for Silicon Valley and Tech Industry

Salon's film critic proposes that the horror film "Backrooms," directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, is fundamentally a story about the tech industry rather than psychology, memory, or trauma as other critics have suggested. The film is set at the corner of Capitol and McKee in San Jose, California in fall 1990—a specific time and place the filmmakers emphasize repeatedly through visual cues, including distorted street signs, area code phone numbers, and establishing shots of the Santa Clara Valley. The critic notes that fall 1990 is historically significant as the moment just before the World Wide Web's formal announcement in August 1991, when the internet was still primarily a tool for universities and research institutions. The film's aesthetic of generic, ubiquitous office and strip mall spaces is framed as reflecting capitalism's need for efficiency through economies of scale, making the backroom setting both everywhere and nowhere. Though the film was shot in British Columbia for tax incentives, the deliberate Silicon Valley setting and historical timing suggest the filmmakers intended a cautionary commentary on the tech industry.