What Is The Poolrooms? 'Backrooms' Weirdest Easter Egg, Explained
Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has become a major hit in the horror space and a huge box-office success for a film of its caliber. Inspired by the viral Creepypasta photo and based on Parsons’ YouTube series, the film follows a man who stumbles into a strange dimension that looks like an endless office space.
As the man, Clark, ventures deeper, he sees how strange the Backrooms can be, and in a certain instance, he ends up in the Poolrooms while being chased by a creature. While not known by most people, the Poolrooms is an Easter egg that highlights an even smaller fandom for the liminal space worth checking out.
What Is The Poolrooms?
The Poolrooms have a similar origin to the Backrooms in that it came from a viral photo of a pool area covered in tiles with a pretty sunset backdrop. Poolrooms is supposed to be a calming experience, but by establishing itself as an empty space with pools, it’s hard to ignore the eeriness that lends itself perfectly to the Backrooms.
When the Poolrooms was created, the Backrooms fandom quickly adopted it as a Level 37: Sublimity. According to the wiki lore, the Poolrooms is an endless space of pools with lukewarm water. Sometimes there are slides, but it’s mostly just pool spaces. Aside from some sound anomalies, Level 37 is ultimately safe and has no entities within it.
The Poolrooms Has Its Own Following (And For Good Reason)
Because of the allure of the Backrooms, it’s easy to want to chase the feeling that liminal spaces evoke, as an eerie sense of familiarity juxtaposed with intense paranoia while looking at a space that you can’t find your way out of. The Poolrooms did this so well, while also evoking a sense of calm in still waters, that it has fostered a devoted fanbase.
Reddit has been a great hub for this with r/Poolrooms, where users take photos of calming or strange pools in the world and share them. Some can be directly tied to the Backrooms, while others simply highlight the mundanity of a simple pool. Nevertheless, the Poolrooms fanbase may be smaller than the Backrooms, but it is just as devoted and was more than pleased to see the space teased in the Backrooms film.
Backrooms Gives Audiences A Great Look At The Poolrooms
Backrooms is a film where the Devil truly is in the details. While the Poolrooms isn’t hard to spot, it’s not specifically highlighted, either. As Clark takes his associates into the Backrooms and delves deeper, they all get separated, and he runs off with a camera. Trying to escape the entities following him, he stumbles into a dingy version of the Poolrooms that’s just as misremembered as the rest of the Backrooms. There’s running water for no reason, as well as a face made of tiles. It’s not necessarily dangerous, but it also doesn’t feel safe.
Parsons never used the wiki as a source for his inspiration, so the Poolrooms is his interpretation, and it honors the originality of the viral post perfectly. It wouldn’t make sense to explore a spin-off inspired by the Poolrooms, but knowing that it’s there goes a long way for the fandom and shows just how much love went into making Backrooms.
