Backrooms | 2026

Although set in 1990s 'San Jose, California', tapping into the Silicon Valley tech vibe, the film was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia.

First off, the "backrooms' themselves. The labyrinthine 30,000 square-foot set was built across four soundstages in a fairly anonymous office park in Vancouver, rather than one of the city's studio facilities. Now for the stats so beloved of movie publicity material: it required 37,000 square feet of wallpaper and 29,000 square feet of carpeting. And it was yellow.

The claustrophobic mood means there are not too many practical locations, but the ones chosen preserve the atmosphere of unreality and unease.

'Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire' furniture showroom run by Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a unit on a small isolated-looking mall in Port Coquitlam, east of Vancouver. Sandwiched between the Trans-Canada Highway, Hwy 1, and the Fraser River, it's 15 King Edward Street.

The oddly unreal shallow-roofed bungalow estate of Clark's employees, Kat and Bobby (Lukita Maxwell and Finn Bennett), is actually a motel. It's the 2400 Motel, 2400 Kingsway, Vancouver.

65 rooms in 18 buildings, the motel dates from 1946, and its striking retro appearance has seen it used in TV series such as The X Files, Bates Motel, Supernatural, Smallville and Yellowjackets

Which just leaves the brief glimpses of the 'Async Research Facility' which are based on the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, 8001 Redwood Boulevard in Novato, California, designed by architect IM Pei.

If you're interested, the photo that originally inspired the windowless yellow-walled space was indeed that of an empty furniture store, 807 Oregon Street in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It's too late to turn it into a tourist attraction (a great escape room venue, huh?), it's already been redecorated to become HobbyTown retail store and a Revolution Raceway track.