12 thoughts about liminal horror

The new film Backrooms directed by Kane Parsons has everyone talking about ‘liminal horror’. As someone who writes stories which might fit into this bracket, I’m excited to have a new sub-genre to ponder. Here are some initial thoughts – reactions, almost – to a phrase I had not heard until about three days ago. 1. In liminal horror the space itself is the source of the unease, not the ghosts or monsters that lurk within it. A still image of an empty room can evoke the appropriate sense of unease, partly because it is empty. 2. “It’s bigger on the inside…” Perhaps liminal horror is about spaces that should not be and that make no sense. A long corridor is creepy; a corridor that seems infinitely long is deeply unsettling. H.P. Lovecraft wrote about spaces with non-Euclidean geometry just as he referred to impossible colours. You might also think of the deliberately disconcerting geometry of Hill House in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Or even the land that somehow sits…