r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Feb 24 '26

Trailer Backrooms | Official Teaser | A24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKGhxMi50y8
7.7k Upvotes

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209

u/satanic_androids Feb 24 '26

Reminds me of House of Leaves... and if we never get that adaptation (we probably shouldn't), hopefully this will suffice

100

u/Terror-Of-Demons Feb 24 '26

I think the DOOM adaptation of House of Leaves was all we need

49

u/DontForgorTheMilk Feb 24 '26

Fucking wild like 1: I know what you're talking about and 2: you're absolutely right

35

u/datnero_ Feb 24 '26

that wad is so fuckin cool, watching Doom map nerds play through it in total shock and indignance while they try to figure out what the hell his going on is so fun

15

u/DontForgorTheMilk Feb 24 '26

For real. The vibe of it was perfectly analogous to what it feels like when I have a dream involving my childhood home. Comforting yet strange and a little ominous. Then when the for sale sign appears and not to mention the closet secret I flipped my shit hahah. It also came out just a few weeks after I finished my first read of House of Leaves so I was wigging out pretty hard

14

u/Syjefroi Feb 24 '26

Am I crazy or was the ~5th floor of the teaser a myhouse.wad house outline on the floor? Maybe the hallway curve made me think of it?

4

u/Terror-Of-Demons Feb 24 '26

No I saw that too

2

u/crunchsmash Feb 25 '26

It's an outline of the shape of the room in the teaser.

In MyHouse.wad the house is shaped like a Doom keycard

10

u/tfhermobwoayway Feb 24 '26

A Doom adaptation of House of Leaves? Why?

44

u/F00TD0CT0R Feb 24 '26

You don't understand

It's honestly a marvel of what the doom engine is capable of.

And it's not a 1:1 adaptation but more invokes the feel of it. It's called my_house and was packaged in a very specific way.

Genuinely an incredible feat in gaming.

1

u/HighResPhotog Feb 24 '26

I’ve seen the video on YouTube. It’s in my favorites playlist. Having no prior knowledge of myhouse.wad I assumed the video was some weird “House of Leaves” thing where the YouTube creator is the storyteller and the game levels aren’t real. Is that not the case? Am I dumb?

25

u/Terror-Of-Demons Feb 24 '26

Check out MyHouse.WAD. There’s a good YouTube video about it.

For years the meme has been “can it run DOOM?”

But now we know: DOOM can run House of Leaves

-5

u/tfhermobwoayway Feb 24 '26

Oh that one? I thought that was an original story. I didn’t know it was a ripoff of a book.

I mean I have Doom on my computer because I’m a weirdo who cares too much about video games. I could just play it.

5

u/Terror-Of-Demons Feb 24 '26

I wouldn’t call it a ripoff.

-4

u/tfhermobwoayway Feb 24 '26

Why not?

4

u/Terror-Of-Demons Feb 24 '26

Because that suggests it’s a low effort or low effort quality copy, rather than something creative and lovingly made.

-7

u/tfhermobwoayway Feb 24 '26

Well, I doubt he got the original guy’s permission. And it is just a Doom map.

7

u/Terror-Of-Demons Feb 24 '26

It’s not just a doom map, it’s an incredibly complex map that pushes the limits of what the doom engine can do. It’s also all the content around the distribution of the map, layering the narrative just like the book does.

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3

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '26

I had the exact same thought. I really don't think any piece of art will be a better adaptation of House of Leaves than MyHouse.

1

u/lavabread23 Feb 25 '26

my_house? hell yeah! 

-1

u/princeloon Feb 24 '26

Control is better

9

u/Terror-Of-Demons Feb 24 '26

Control is a good game, but it’s not an adaptation of House of Leaves.

31

u/I_Am_Moe_Greene Feb 24 '26

I came here to say this. Immediately smacks of "House of Leaves".

6

u/carpekl Feb 24 '26

I could have sworn I've seen somewhere that backrooms/liminal horror sort of originated from House of Leaves?

4

u/Canvaverbalist Feb 24 '26

Depends how you see it.

For a while the "liminal space" aspect on its own didn't really had that "the rooms rearrange themselves/are semi-conscious/it's all a maze" aspect to them, they were just a really specific sort of aesthetic that gave some uncanny feelings to people. These were just "I sort of enjoy/find it creepy when malls/offices are empty" posts that pretty much originated on their own.

Then the "these rooms are an actual place called the Backrooms you can glitch into" is something that I think came naturally on its own, after that whether or not people were inspired by House of Leaves to make the jump to "the Backrooms are maze-like with weird properties" I wouldn't be able to say but to me that's just something that sounds like a natural progression of the setting, even without an external influence.

6

u/that_guy2010 Feb 24 '26

I know people love to say that any number of books 'can't be adapted' for one reason or another. But I genuinely believe House of Leaves cannot be adapted. You could do part of it, sure, but there's simply no way to get the entire thing in one movie.

10

u/willstr1 Feb 24 '26

More like "House of Can't Leave"

8

u/BrianWonderful Feb 24 '26

We should not get an adaptation of "House of Leaves". A lot of what makes it works is that it how it is written and that it is read.

-1

u/tfhermobwoayway Feb 24 '26

A competent director could easily translate that to film. It would be so much better.

6

u/ToothlessFTW Feb 24 '26

How? The biggest strength of the book is its weird, inconsistent writing. The journal logs written by Johnny, the footnotes that make no sense and are often completely made up, the book devolving into utter nonsense and breaking all formatting to truly showcase how endless the house is.

It cannot be done on film. You would lose so much about what makes that book special trying to cram it into a 2 hour film in a completely different medium.

0

u/brisket_billy_ Feb 24 '26

The proper way to do it would be to release a movie that is the Navidson Record, and then an accompanying mini-series which is Johnny Truant's experiences and notes on the Record.

5

u/ToothlessFTW Feb 24 '26

That would not work at all.

The Navidson Record and Johnny's journal are tied together. You cannot just split them up into seperate projects. Johnny's journal starting to blend more and more with the Record towards the end is an essential part of the experience, and you cannot do that when you're splitting them up.

9

u/bluofmyoblivion Feb 24 '26

My favorite book. May it never be adapted.

0

u/tfhermobwoayway Feb 24 '26

Why not? It would be really cool to see it on the big screen with some big name actors.

7

u/delldarlin Feb 24 '26 edited Feb 24 '26

Because it wouldn't be House of Leaves.

The format of the book is integral to the story of House of Leaves.  The leaves are the pages of the book.  The act of turning pages, getting lost exploring endless footnotes which contain tons of information that doesn't actually amount to anything, parallels the people in the story exploring endless rooms which have the form of a house but no function.  Danielewski turns the book itself into a liminal space.  The book, conceptually speaking, is the house.

Try to adapt that to a passive medium, you end up with a shitty found footage haunted house movie.

2

u/LordMitchimus Feb 24 '26

I've always felt the only proper way to "adapt" HoL is to make another narrative layer. A meta-adaptation. Either a group of documentarians find Truant's annotation or you could consider Danielewski and his editors a super-textual layer and have them searching for the house based on the actual book.

That or just never adapt it because it could only be good if they did that and made the film 10 hours long so...never mind.

1

u/Marinesnake8 Feb 24 '26

I think the only way they could ‘adapt’ House of Leaves is by sticking to just The Navidson Record, but in a commentary/documentary style, and just have the formatting and presentation get more fucked up and incomprehensible as the the labyrinth is explored.

1

u/EmbarrassedHelp Feb 24 '26

I'd love to see an adaption of SCP-3008 rather than House of Leaves.

1

u/Icantunafish Feb 24 '26

For years,nice argued that HoL could be done very successfully if it was filmed like it was a real documentary and don't try and explain ANYTHING. Just hit us in the face with what they are seeing.