Backrooms Has An Amazing (And Freaky) Connection To The Alien Franchise

Spoilers for "Backrooms" follow.

Creepypasta-inspired horror hit "Backrooms" fits into the niche of 'liminal horror,' which is all about how scary an empty, seemingly endless space can be. But there's something much more dangerous in the Backrooms than just some physics-defying architecture. The dimension also creates distorted, monstrous copies of the people who visit the Backrooms — a terrifying twist on how our presence lingers in the physical spaces we inhabit. 

In the film, the portal to the Backrooms is found in the basement of "Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire," an unsuccessful furniture store. Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is shown filming commercials for his store in a cheesy pirate costume, and the Backrooms creates a grotesque copy of this pirate character. "Pirate Clark" is an almost eight foot tall cannibalistic homunculus (played by Robert Bobroczkyi, who really is that tall) that savagely kills Clark and then stalks after his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve).

You won't recognize Bobroczkyi due to the extensive makeup to make him resemble a twisted, lanky Chiwetwel Ejiofor, but there's a good chance you've already seen him in a similar role. In 2024, he appeared in "Alien: Romulus" as "the Offspring," the part-human, part-xenomorph, part-Engineer abomination that menaces Rain (Cailee Spaeny) in the movie's postscript.

The Offspring emerges after the pregnant Kay (Isabela Merced) is exposed to the "black goo" mutagenic bio-weapon originally introduced back in "Prometheus." She gives birth ahead of schedule to a baby that grows into a predatory adult in mere moments. The creature's appearance was created with special effects makeup, but its towering height was all Bobroczkyi.

Born and raised in Romania, Bobroczyski stands at 7 feet, 7 inches tall (or 2.31 meters). In high school and college, he made the most of his height as a basketball player. With "Alien: Romulus," he broke into acting, and "Backrooms" suggests he's found his niche as lumbering, nonverbal creatures in horror movies.

Early concept art for "Alien: Romulus" shows it took a few tries to lock down the Offspring's design. At one point, the creature would've gone through a juvenile stage rather than growing almost instantaneously. But in the end, "Romulus" found the right look and actor for the Offspring. I still remember my heart dropping at the first sight of the creature in a dark corridor, because it's one of the scariest ventures into the uncanny valley that I've seen in a recent film.

The monsters of "Alien" have always been a twisted facismile of childbirth, and the Offspring lifts that theme from allegory to plain as day text. Yet this creature is arguably creepier because it looks even more childlike than a typical xenomorph. The whole horror of the Offspring is that it's in the vague shape of a human, but not quite right.

The same could be said for Pirate Clark, not to mention the Backrooms themselves. Spaces meant for human habitation that are instead empty and silent just feels so wrong, and it's a horror that only grows the more you stay in such a space — no giant cannibal needed.

"Backrooms" is playing in theaters.