Transcript
It’s Friday, July 24, 2026. I’m allegedly Jim Treacher.
And we all get a bit lost sometimes.
Many years ago, I moved to Washington, D.C. to work for a crazy TV host I used to know. At that point, this was in 2010, I didn’t own a smartphone. My little flip-phone didn’t have Google Maps or any kind of map. It was just a phone.
So when I first got to the city and decided to walk around, get my bearings, see the sights, I got lost. I knew a few addresses of places I wanted to check out, but I didn’t know that a particular address could be on a SW street or a SE street. And somewhere I made a wrong turn, and I wasn’t sure how to get back.
Didn’t know anybody. New in town. Wandering around.
It was a strange feeling for me. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood or anything, but I didn’t know where I was, and I didn’t know how to get back home. Not home home. Home was 600 miles away. But I didn’t know how to get back to the ridiculously expensive temporary apartment I had rented.
(And yes, I was obeying all pedestrian traffic laws. Which ended up not mattering about a month later, but that’s another story.)
But there I was in a populated area, people all around me, and I was lost. I felt lost. I had that little moment of panic, you know: “Oh, crap, what do I do?” I was embarrassed. Maybe the slightest beginnings of a touch of dread.
Then I backtracked and found my way back to familiar territory, and it was all good. But I did have that little moment of: “Oh no. I don’t know where I am.”
This is now a genre of horror films.
Backrooms is a box-office phenomenon, and it’s basically a Twilight Zone episode about a guy who gets lost in another dimension of creepy, empty offices with yellow wallpaper and fluorescent lighting. It looks a lot like one of the first offices I worked in when I was fresh out of college.
“Liminal horror,” they call it. The feeling of being trapped or lost in a place that seems familiar, but it’s just… off somehow. You can’t put your finger on it, but it just creeps you out. “Existential horror” is another term for that.
The whole Backrooms phenomenon started with a photo somebody posted online. Somebody else came up with a little backstory about how it was actually another reality, and if you got stuck there, you might never find your way back home.
Well, now Backrooms has made three or four times as much money as Supergirl. For maybe, I don’t know, 1/20th of the budget. And that means we’re going to get more Backrooms-type stories.
I just saw a trailer for an upcoming existential horror flick called It Ends. It’s about some kids on a road trip who find themselves on a straight stretch of road that never ends. They just keep driving and driving, but there are no turns or towns or people or anything.
Which is similar to the premise of the show From on MGM+, which is about a group of people from all over America who find themselves in this creepy little town full of vampire-like creatures. And the townspeople all have the same story: They were driving in the country. They had to stop because a fallen tree was blocking the road. And when they turned around to go back, they found themselves in this strange little rundown town.
It’s the worst-case scenario that goes through your head when you find yourself in a place you don’t recognize. It’s primal. It’s way deep down inside your lizard brain.
“Okay, I’m in a place that looks like places I’ve been before, but it’s not. I don’t belong here. I’m not safe. I can’t control what’s happening.”
Another really good example of this is a Japanese movie I just watched called Exit 8. It’s about a fellow who takes the subway to work one morning and finds himself in an endless loop of subway corridors. He keeps going in circles, and everything looks the same, and there’s no way out.
Then he sees a poster with some rules on it:
Don’t overlook any anomalies. (Anything out of place.)
If you find an anomaly, turn back.
If you don’t find an anomaly, keep going.
Keep doing this until you reach Exit 8.
So it’s like a game of Spot the Difference. One loop around, maybe the eyes on the posters are following you. That’s an anomaly. Or a door has a knob right in the middle of the door. Anomaly. Or the ceiling starts bleeding. Definitely an anomaly.
You have to catch eight of those in a row before you can leave. And if you miss one, it resets and you have to start all over again.
There’s an in-story reason this is happening to this guy. Which I won’t spoil, because it’s actually an effective psychological drama. It’s not very complicated, but it’s deep. I thought it was really well done.
And it is in Japanese. No English dub, just subtitles. But there’s not a lot of dialogue, and I’m a fast reader, so I had no problem following what was going on. You can catch it on AMC+, which to me is the best value in streaming.
That one’s based on a Japanese video game, which I haven’t played. And that’s kind of a pattern with these newer horror movies. They’re based on things like internet memes, video games. They’re horror stories cooked up by people who spend most of their time in front of a screen, for people who spend most of their time in front of a screen. Hello, that’s me.
And there aren’t any monsters, per se. There’s no Dracula or Frankenstein or Freddy or Jason. It’s about the horror of being alive in a world of places and things that you have to navigate. A city, a subway, a road system. Manmade creations that are supposed to make your life easier, but then the whole thing turns on you and makes you feel strange and lost and alone.
Who can’t relate to that? It’s a lot more relatable than a blonde girl in blue tights beating up space aliens.
Speaking of superhero crap bombing at the box office…
Prime Video just added the He-Man movie. I know it’s called Masters of the Universe, but they should have just called it The He-Man Movie. That only came out like six weeks ago, and they’ve already dumped it on streaming for free.
I’m old enough to remember the He-Man cartoon and the Dolph Lundgren He-Man movie, and I had no interest in seeing this in a theater. There was just no audience for it. The superhero thing has run its course.
But apparently it’s actually pretty good. The Red Letter Media guys liked it. I trust them, so…
And Fisto is in it. Gotta have Fisto. So I might check it out.
Another week down. Thank you for listening all the way to the end of this.
Please tell somebody about this podcast so I can keep doing it. Tell a friend, an enemy, a complete stranger, somebody. Word of mouth is my only advertising, and your subscriptions are the only thing keeping me afloat.
So I need your help, man. Or woman. Or… other.
Alright, that’s it. See ya later, seppos.
