Book Review: The Backrooms by Matt Wildasin
Title: The Backrooms
Author: Matt Wildasin
Release date: February 22, 2023
As someone who doesn’t spend much time online looking specifically at creepypastas, I’ve found it fascinating – and amazing – how much of them become part of the horror community lore and eventually, we get a novelization of some sort around them. Take Jeremy Bates’ ‘The Sleep Experiment,’ or novels based on Slender Man. And even recently, Trevor Henderson, creator of a number of creepypasta creatures released his own novel, ‘Scarewaves,’ and while it didn’t have Siren Head or Long Horse or Cartoon Cat, he did create some new spooky things to run amok.
One of the most commonly known or popular creepypastas has been The Backrooms. According to the web, it was first shared in 2019, but exploded in popularity in 2022, when a short film was made and shared widely. Kane Parsons, who made that short, is now in the process of making a full-length feature film about it, and I’m excited to see what he does. I actually remember when I first came across his short film. Author Stephen Graham Jones had shared it on his Twitter page and mentioned how unnerving it was. I watched it and was held within its magic. It was fantastic. Now, for those who don’t know what The Backrooms are, it is a place that was ‘discovered’ within a seemingly normal looking building, or below a building, or within a parallel void of some sort, made up completely of bare, sparse rooms and hallways. A lot of the area looks identical throughout and as the person within moves further, often strange shadows will be seen, noises heard or creatures appear.
Which leads us to Matt Wildasin’s novella, ‘The Backrooms.’ I’ll admit, when it was announced, I was super excited to see what Matt did with this concept, but that excitement soon soured when it was shared it was an epistolary based story. As you may have read in previous reviews, I struggle with that format, so I didn’t dive in right away. But over this year, of 2023, I read a few epistolary stories that I really enjoyed. So, with the year coming to a close, I decided to jump in and see what worlds Wildasin created.
What I liked: The story takes place shortly after Y2K. For those of us old enough to remember – there was a palpable fear around the end of the 90’s when an uncertainty was proposed regarding computer functions when the clock ticked over and we went from 1999 to 2000. What would happen with the coding? Would planes fall from the sky? Would we have nuclear meltdowns?
Wildasin posits that this is EXACTLY what happened. That when the clock ticked over, life as we knew it came to an end and every citizen that lived was no longer a real body, but a binary code, existing in a simulation. But some of those codes ACTUALLY woke up, and those few who did, found themselves in a place where the halls looked the same, the rooms looked the same and they understood they’d arrived at The Backrooms.
Told through letters left behind in case someone else finds them, we follow two different characters as they try and navigate their way through the labyrinth of hallways they’ve awoken in, finding clues, strange mechanical creatures and that some rooms don’t change. It makes for a claustrophobic experience, one that pulls the reader deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole as we try to make heads or tails over what is actually going on.
The final third reminded me a lot of the sci-fi movie ‘Cube’ (actually a lot of this book reminded me of that movie!) with some unique twists and unexpected developments. It all led to an ending that seemed very prescient if you’re a person who believes that we do really live in a computer simulation and nothing that happens around us is real.
What I didn’t like: While it was suggested as epistolary, I’d actually counter that and say it’s more of a first person retelling of events, just labelled as letters, which made for an easy time for my brain.
What I wasn’t a huge fan of was all the coding stuff. It made sense in the context of the story and the way the events of Y2 happened, etc., but as someone who isn’t super techy when it comes to code and binary stuff, I wasn’t sure how it would work and if something was discovered, if it was a big deal or not.
Why you should buy this: Overall, I did have a lot of fun with this one, even if I did find at times it didn’t seem to fully grasp the environment around it and a lot of the possibilities or where it could go simply didn’t go anywhere.
This was a fast-paced read, very compulsive and ultimately one that asks some big questions and forces the reader to answer a few on their own.
3/5
