yeah. its crazy how young he is.
Backrooms is like Creepypasta, slenderman, SCP foundation etc. not owned by one person. a group meme/exercise of people collectively creating and telling creepy stories, and forming a mythology.
the Backrooms is a combination of a few things. Liminal spaces. quiet dread. the familiar becoming unfamiliar.
Some classic examples. Hotel hallways. or office hallways. hallways after hallways of rooms looking exactly the same. getting lost. no one around.
stadiums, malls, empty highways. places that normally have tons of people. empty. its unsettling.
the familiar not quite right. Classic creepy. like Amity horror's Red room. Like walking into an house for sale, and finding the table set with 3 chairs, a fourth chair over by the oven. 6 knives on the table, and a spoon.. Why? what scenario could have set this up?
The child door in Coraline. Buying a house, and in one of the room is a 2 ft door, thats locked. you don't have the key.. and you know there is no opening on the other side of the wall. its weird, and creepy, and you wouldn't be able to get it out of your head.
Amity's red room. normal house.. with a closet with soot/burn marks around the door. inside its painted a bright red. your mind struggles to come up with a story to explain it... and none of it makes sense.
these oddities then compound, making less and less sense. getting weirder and weirder. until its clear, its not just weird stories. its some alien force attempting to recreate what it percieves as our reality. (possibly from stolen memories.)
imagine you were to draw and create an anthill for an ant. you may have seen an anthill, and can try to recreate one as you think it should look like. but it would never be correct. you aren't an ant. the pheromones, the correct placement and distances would be wrong.
Kane specifically had his own version, and amazingly good videos. largely ignoring what everyone else was doing.
Director and VFX artist
www.youtube.com
some examples:
Crazy part is this shit was done in Blender. by like a 19 year old..
Kanes versions do specifically have monsters in them.
A bunch of SCP shit is 1:1 to Backrooms. the endless stairway down in the college utility room for example.
Some are just endless mazes trapped forever. some have the implication of monsters, but its more the signs and hints of one, noises, etc. but not actually seeing it.
some is the room itself is a monster. the slide in the woods.