The Watchfire

The Watchfire

Reflections

A Writing Lesson from The Backrooms

Joseph W. Knowles's avatar
Joseph W. Knowles
Jun 09, 2026
∙ Paid

Last week I went to see the movie, The Backrooms. You might have heard of it.

If you’re of a certain age and a certain degree of internet literacy, then you’ll also be familiar with the original version. Investigate all of the lore on your own time, because I won’t go into it here (and I have only a superficial awareness of it myself).

The movie was decent for what it set out to be, namely a psychological/cosmic horror movie that capitalized on a well-known internet phenomenon. There was one thing that I think it did particularly well, however, and I wanted to highlight it because I think writers—especially those who write speculative fiction—can benefit from it.1

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