Sunday Scaries: What Do We Fear From Liminal Spaces?

Oh boy, it even has that iconic little off-key chord to open it:

Last week, we were hit with the full trailer for a feature-length movie adapting a book comic show tweet thread urban legend short films meme I… don’t know how, precisely, to describe this strange internet phenomenon this is pulling from. It might be fair to describe this as less an adaptation of a distinct story or fictional universe so much as adapting an online community’s shared fear of… big empty rooms. You don’t think that’s inherently silly, do you? Because you’ve had “that feeling” before, haven’t you? Being in some hallway or stairwell or large empty lobby and it… creeped you out, in a way that you can’t quite describe.

This feeling of unease is triggered in what are called “liminal spaces” — man-made rooms or structures that have no purpose beyond connecting areas you actually want to be in. They facilitate foot traffic. They’re an in-between area you have to walk through or wait in to get to where you really want to go. They’re not meant to look inviting or cozy. They are the physical representation of transition, which is inherently uncertain and anxiety-inducing. Especially when you are alone in one. There are entire online communities that share their experiences getting “lost” in these looooooong hallways:

Or being inside one that should be bustling and full of people… but are empty, instead:

Now we’re getting additional feelings of isolation. Of being abandoned in a relic of civilization that has been left behind by everyone else. These kinds of places are going to be more common in the future, by the way. Think about it: we’ve already lost our “third spaces” over the course of the last ten years. Nations all over the world are facing collapsing birthrates and an aging population. What will become of all these buildings and rooms and hallways and lobbies and town centers and parking spaces built to support a shrinking population?

Over time, they will be left behind. There will be fewer people bothering to transit through them. And the few that do will share a sense that something is “wrong.” Because there is something wrong! You’re in a place built for a world, an era, and a people that just don’t exist, anymore. And the eerie silence, the large scale of the place, the artificial fluorescent lighting, and the unnatural emptiness all remove you from where you psychologically feel safe. You are away from all the signifiers of nature in a depersonalized space, and isolated from the humans who remind you of your own personhood.

Being able to exploit these compounding fears is what vaulted YouTuber Kane Parsons to a movie deal with A24, entrusted to direct two Academy Award nominated actors, at the age of twenty. Because when you have those kinds of instincts for horror, lack of experience is not a hindrance. You have the juice. You have the eye for what scares people. And all of this was formed from what is, effectively, a modern-day folktale, a primal fear that could only have been discovered and spread by people experiencing the modern world we live in.

But what piques my interest is not the exploitation of a fear my generation became open about admitting to. I’m more interested in how he escalates that. Having Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve just wandering around eerie-looking rooms for ninetysomething minutes would make for a boring cinematic experience. Based on the small hints we get in the trailer, there are potentials for dramatic escalation through surveillance, sinister people in the rooms, the sheer scale of this place, the apparent phenomenon of “no-clipping” through solid objects (something I have never experienced, but apparently is a thing other people swear they have), and most intriguingly, the rooms themselves being supernaturally constructed in a kind of “procedurally-generated” way. The rooms in the trailer don’t seem to make architectural or aesthetic sense, so there’s already an impression that whatever keeps building them in perpetuity has no real understanding of what purpose these rooms are supposed to serve, or even what “purpose” means.

Now… does that sound familiar to you? Something that just creates vague facsimiles of things we recognize and find meaning in… but they feel “off” in a way that unsettles you? Like an Uncanny Valley factory? Look, I understand that I have a righteous-as-hell agenda against AI, but I think I’m onto something here. Or, at least, I’ve found a way to add a layer of creepiness to my own experience watching this movie next month.

Are you scared of liminal spaces? What is the eeriest liminal space you’ve ever found yourself in? Let us know in the comments.