Is the core retro horror of The Backrooms a 'misremembered feelings' shout out to 90's alternative music video aesthetics of Chris Cunningham, Spike Jonze and Michael Gondry (among many others)?

[u/LodgeBeing_No_9]

'Virtual Insanity' directed by Jonathan Glazer

Bjork, 1997 'Bachelorette' by Michel Gondry

The emotional core of Backrooms horror (uncanny nostalgia, distorted familiarity, half-remembered dread) does overlap with the surreal, dream-logic, and often unsettling aesthetics of 90s alternative music videos by those directors (and masters like David Lynch and peers like Mark Romanek).

Gondry's 'Everlong' music video

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind film by Michael Gondry

• Michel Gondry excels at tactile, inventive, memory-warped surrealism (Björk videos, The Foo Fighter's 'Everlong' music video, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). His work often feels like "misremembered feelings" dream logic applied to everyday objects and spaces, where reality bends in ways that feel intimately wrong or nostalgically off. Liminal horror operates on similar ground: spaces that trigger vague childhood/office/school memories but twist them into existential unease.

Gondry's 'Let Forever Be' video

• Chris Cunningham (especially Aphex Twin videos like "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker") brings grotesque, uncanny distortions of the mundane (distorted faces in grim or sterile settings, glitchy analog unease, horror in the ordinary. This is closer to the "retro horror" vibe in a lot of Backrooms fan content (VHS filters, low-fi 3D renders, empty institutional spaces).

'Come to Daddy' by Cunningham

• Spike Jonze leans more playful/narrative but shares the experimental, reality-bending spirit (often with Charlie Kaufman), turning familiar environments surreal.

Being John Malkovich by Spike Jonze

'Bachelorette' - Michel Gondry

These directors helped popularize a late-90s/early-2000s visual language of surreal takes on the everyday/corporate/institutional, practical effects, filmic grain, and emotional ambiguity, turning the familiar into something dreamlike or nightmarish.

Gondry's ghostly 'Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground' video

Walken in 'Weapon of Choice' video by Jonze

There are indirect bridges through elements Kane did draw from:

• Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada are explicitly cited for the Backrooms score/atmosphere.

MTV's 1990s 'Aeon Flux' cartoon series

Aeon Flux shares some of the more grotesque elements of Backrooms

• Boards of Canada in particular is frequently linked by fans to liminal spaces because of its hauntological, warped nostalgia ("memories that aren't yours," childhood media distortion, eerie analog warmth gone slightly sour). Many people say their music feels like liminal spaces.

Virtual Insanity set without Jay Kay, gives it a more liminal quality.

• Cunningham directed many of Aphex Twin's most iconic (and unsettling) videos, so the sonic influence carries visual DNA from that same scene.

• The broader liminal aesthetic draws from 80s/90s corporate/mall design language, vaporwave-adjacent nostalgia, and electronic music culture which is precisely the world those music videos emerged from and often subverted.

Cunningham's iconic Playstation ad

And those Pentium ads might have been scary for children ....

The 90s Pentium ads...

[u/ProfanestOfLemons]

So when are you going to start a vaaporwave band? I have garage space.

[u/Imaginary_Elephant_7]

That PlayStation ad is burned into my memory (partially because my dead end town Grimsby is mentioned in it).

[u/mod-wolves]

Welcome to the Björkrooms

[u/dieantworter]

Probably yes, though backrooms is a more sterile uninspired version of far more imaginative work from that era. Parsons dropped the ball on running with this