How Horror Hit Backrooms Terrorizes Viewers with Design
Production designer Danny Vermette unpacks the film’s fearless scale and embrace of the ‘90s
Not since The Shining has a horror film’s wallpaper caused such a stir. In the ‘90s-set mindbender Backrooms, now in theaters, bitter furniture salesman Clark (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor), a failed architect, walks through the wall of his store’s basement and into a seemingly endless maze of yellow-chevron clad rooms and corridors. What these liminal spaces represent—isolating in their monotony and air of abandonment, unnerving with surreal accents like slanted floors and half-submerged objects—will be debated long after the credits roll and you start Googling interpretations of what unfolds when Clark’s therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), follows him inside. But for production designer Danny Vermette, who lists M.C. Escher and the 2002 movie One Hour Photo as aesthetic references, everything about bringing director Kane Parsons’ detailed vision to the big screen had to be precise.
For starters, they wanted that wallpaper to resemble the one in the photo that inadvertently launched the Backrooms universe in 2019. An anonymous user on the paranormal board of website 4chan shared a haunting image of what was later identified as an Oshkosh, Wisconsin furniture store turned HobbyTown, emptied for renovation. An inspired commenter imagined stepping out of reality and into “the Backrooms,” miles of ominous, fluorescent-lit spaces in which to be trapped (not necessarily alone). Others took that idea and ran with it, including Parsons, who, in 2022 at the age of 16, posted a 9-minute short film to YouTube made with the 3D software Blender that has 85 million views and counting. The popularity of his resulting web series spawned the movie, which has grossed more than $260 million worldwide and led film distributor A24 to sell wallpaper in its online shop.
According to Internet sleuths, the wallpaper in the original photograph was actually a beige-based chevron pattern from now-defunct ‘90s brand Borden Home Wallcoverings. “It’s interesting that we’re basing this whole world off of what is kind of false information,” Vermette tells Galerie with a laugh. “It’s just a bad photo. The white balance is off.”
He did as many as 50 camera tests with different variations of his yellow chevron wallpaper before determining what works best with their custom lighting scheme and wouldn’t striate on camera when viewed in mass volume. Vermette’s team ultimately ordered upwards of 32,000 square feet from Wallpaper Online Canada to blanket four Vancouver soundstages. “I think they burnt out printer heads and were like, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll just buy a new machine.’ Like, it got to that crazy level,” Vermette says of the local lifesaver. “We wanted to appeal to the hardcore fan, but it also had to draw in people that knew nothing about the Backrooms.”
It wasn’t only the walls that demanded close consideration. Vermette estimates that they looked at 200 carpet samples before ordering about 27,000 square feet from another Vancouver vendor. “Again, we had to make sure that our carpet pattern wouldn’t give us weird visual distortion, and then that the tonality was right, the pile was right. Can we paint it? Are we able to age it?” he says, explaining that two variants are used in the film. “There’s a moment when Clark is cresting a corner, and we look down the long hallway to the silhouette of a cardboard cutout, and the carpet transitions from one tone to the next. I haven’t seen anyone be like, ‘Whoa, that’s sick,’ but that’s one of my proudest moments.”
The sets themselves were constructed on risers to give the actors spaces to climb up, crawl through, and slide down. “What I learned is, a lot of the time creating is what you don’t do,” Vermette says. “We are creating a world where rules don’t apply. I was really careful to make sure that we weren’t doing things just because we could.”
Pacing was key. He had to establish a sense of familiarity in the Backrooms before he introduced the stranger elements. “It’s almost fishing. You recognize it, but as the ball unravels, you start to realize there’s something very off here, and it enables the experience of going down that rabbit hole,” Vermette says. “Once you realize you are in Wonderland, that’s the moment you’re like, ‘Uh-oh…’”
Together with Parsons and director of photography Jeremy Cox, Vermette built tension by playing with angles, tight corners, and half walls. The soundstages became such a game of Tetris that maps had to be issued so crewmembers would stop getting lost. Areas were given names like Vertigo Room, home to an Escher-esque staircase to the ceiling. As Vermette told his mother when he recently spent 30 minutes texting responses to her questions after she saw the movie, the room’s entrance, ledge, staircase, and ceiling were real and filmed with a blue screen underneath. (Spoiler alert: Here’s the answer to his mom’s other technical query about that climactic sequence.)
Nostalgic locations around Vancouver make appearances in the film as well, such as the famous 2400 Motel on Kingsway and a locked-in-time cul-de-sac in suburban Burnaby. “There’s maybe one updated house on the whole block that we used for Mary’s neighborhood,” Vermette says. “That’s very rare in Vancouver. There’s usually a McMansion plunked right in the middle of everything.”
To dress Clark’s showroom, as well as Mary’s office and home interiors and select corners of the Backrooms, lead buyer Eric Cairns scoured Facebook Marketplace for vintage finds in mint condition. “In that era, everything was so mass produced. It just felt like a Sears catalog. They used to do such a good job of, like, oh my god, there’s 94 pages of couches,” notes Vermette, who didn’t let the ‘90s aesthetic frighten him off.
“I don’t put anything I don’t love in a movie. Even if it’s ugly, it’s ugly-beautiful,” he muses. “There’s stuff that, in its heyday, was considered so chic. There are pieces in there that I may put in my home? I don’t know.”
He can picture the bold pastel print of Mary’s sofa and the light-wood trimming being cool again at some point. “I’m seeing elements of the ‘90s and the ‘80s starting to rear their heads, for sure,” Vermette says. “They become reinvented, but I think the base core design element of that vibe is still beautiful.”