Into the Liminal

A Backrooms Film-Location Tour Across the Lower Mainland

There’s a particular kind of quiet that Backrooms taught a whole generation to notice — the hum of fluorescent tubes, the squeak of a shoe on a polished floor, a hallway that seems to go on a beat too long. The film found that feeling right here in Metro Vancouver, and once you start looking for it, the Lower Mainland turns out to be full of these in-between places: empty-feeling malls, an underground bowling alley frozen in 1950, a motor court that hasn’t really changed since 1946.

This itinerary strings together the movie’s two confirmed filming locations with four companion stops that channel the exact same energy. It runs neatly west to east — from downtown Vancouver out to Coquitlam — so you can follow it as one ambitious day or, more comfortably, spread it across two and let each space breathe.

Essential Planning Tips

When to go:

  • Nearly everything here is indoors, so this is a fantastic rainy-day or grey-sky itinerary — and honestly, overcast light only deepens the mood.

  • For the emptiest, most cinematic version of each space, aim for weekday mornings and early afternoons. Crowds break the spell.

  • Golden hour still matters for the exteriors (the 2400’s neon, especially), so save those for late in the day.

Getting around: A car gives you the smoothest west-to-east run and makes the Coquitlam leg painless. That said, the first four stops are very transit-friendly — downtown and East Van are well covered by SkyTrain and bus, and SFU has frequent service up Burnaby Mountain. The final hop to Coquitlam is easiest by car.

A note on etiquette: Several of these are working public spaces — a community pool, public tennis courts, an operating motel, a quiet little mall. Part of the fun is that they’re real. Please treat them that way: follow posted photography rules (the pool, in particular, is a no-camera zone), never photograph strangers and spend a few dollars at the businesses that keep these places alive.

Downtown vancouver: Where the Drift Begins

The Mall That Holds Its Breath

Start where the city is busiest and the building is somehow emptiest. Interntational Village Mall, or Tinseltown, sits on a prime corner between Chinatown and Gastown (not to mention, nearby Yaletown) yet it has spent the better part of three decades as Vancouver’s most beloved almost-empty mall — gleaming escalators, a hushed central atrium, a scattering of phone-repair kiosks and mom-and-pop shops. Locals have been quietly tagging it as a real-world liminal space for years, and the moment you step inside you’ll understand why.

It’s not actually dead, which is part of the charm. There’s a Cineplex up top, a Daiso housewares shop, and — a genuine local treasure — Catfe, Vancouver’s first cat café, on the second floor, where you can sip a latte while resident rescue cats decide whether you’re worthy. Are cats the OG ‘something’s not quite right here’ sensing animal? We’ll let you decide.

Make it a stop, not a dash:

  • Ride the long escalators to the top and look back down across the empty atrium — peak ambiance.
  • Late morning on a weekday is the quietest window.
  • A few blocks east, Massy Books is an Indigenous-owned independent bookstore, gallery, and community space that’s a genuine browse-for-an-hour kind of place.
  • The Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, a short stroll away, makes a serene, contemplative counterpoint to all that fluorescent hush.
  • There are so many fantastic dining options in Gastown including local favourites Phnom Penh and Between Two Buns.

Good to know:

  • Open daily, with late hours on weekends — call ahead to confirm lane availability.
  • The Orpheum and the historic Commodore Ballroom are right next door, and the art-deco Vogue (1941) is part of the same vintage-neon stretch of old theatre row.
  • A few blocks over, MacLeod’s Books (455 W Pender) is a gloriously cluttered antiquarian shop with titles piled to the ceiling — a literary labyrinth that’s a liminal space in its own right.

down the Steps into 1930

A few blocks west, down a staircase off the neon-lit Granville entertainment strip, is a room that time forgot in the best possible way. Opened in 1930, Commodore Lanes is Canada’s oldest surviving bowling alley — a low-ceilinged basement of five-pin lanes, billiard tables, hand-painted heritage murals of the Fraser River, and a vintage neon sign that has been glowing over Granville for nearly a century.

It’s everything a liminal space promises — underground, fluorescent, suspended outside of time — except here you’re handed a pair of well-worn shoes and invited to actually play. Roll a few frames of five-pin (a quirky local variation you won’t find most places), then surface back into the theatre district for dinner. It’s a lovely rhyme with where this trip ends.

East Vancouver: The First Confirmed Location

The Iconic 2400 motel

Here’s the first place you’ll recognize from the screen. Built in 1946, the 2400 is the last and best of Kingsway’s post-war auto courts — a cluster of green-and-white bungalows scattered across three and a half landscaped acres, a streamline-moderne office, and a huge red-and-blue neon sign that has become an East Van landmark. Park at your door, just like 1949.

Filmmakers adore it precisely because it has barely changed, and the 2400 has racked up an astonishing on-screen résumé over the decades (The X-Files and Supernatural among them) long before its latest star turn. It’s still an affordable, genuinely operating motel — which means the best way to experience it is to book a night and sleep inside a piece of film history. Do note that redevelopment plans for the site have been approved, so this is very much a see-it-while-you-can landmark.

Nearby on the Kingsway corridor:

  • This stretch is one of the city’s great underrated food streets — exceptional Vietnamese pho and Filipino kitchens line the route.
  • Shoot the neon at dusk, when the sign does its thing against a darkening sky.
  • The Rio Theatre is a lovingly restored 1938 movie house screening arthouse, mainstream, and cult classics — a fitting detour on a film-location tour.

Refuel in Hastings-Sunrise:

  • Far Out Coffee Post is a retrophile’s dream — good espresso alongside pinball machines, records, and vintage finds. A perfect thematic match.
  • For diner-style fare, the beloved Red Wagon and Roundel Cafe anchor the strip.

THE POOLROOMS, ALMOST

If Backrooms gave the internet one indelible image, it’s the Poolrooms — endless tiled chambers, shallow water, warm light, an eerie hush. You can’t recreate that exactly at a working public pool, but Templeton Park Pool gets you the feeling: an unpretentious, old-school East Van indoor pool with a sauna, a whirlpool tucked under a big skylight, and that gentle, echoing stillness particular to indoor water.

The exterior is wrapped in colourful hand-painted tiles made by community members — a wonderful, camera-friendly subject that lets you capture the vibe without ever pointing a lens at the water. The move here is simple: go for a quiet swim or a soak, let the light and the echo do their work, and treat it as a short, atmospheric beat rather than a marquee stop. (Cameras stay in the locker, please.)

Suburban Surrealism: SIMON FRASER & Second confirmed location

The Future is Concrete

Drive up Burnaby Mountain and the trees suddenly give way to one of the most striking pieces of architecture in the country. Designed by Arthur Erickson and Geoffrey Massey and opened in 1965, Simon Fraser University’s‘s Burnaby campus is a brutalist “acropolis” of poured concrete — endless covered walkways, the cathedral-like Academic Quadrangle, and the glass-roofed Convocation Mall — laid across the summit as if it had always been there.

The liminal quality is no accident of mood: those long grey colonnades and depopulated plazas have made SFU Hollywood North’s go-to vision of the future, standing in for space stations, government compounds, and shadowy laboratories in productions like Battlestar Galactica, The X-Files, and Stargate SG-1. For a film-tourism trip, that’s a delicious bonus — you’re walking through a place that has been “the future” on screen for half a century. It’s a public campus, so wander freely, and the concrete looks its moodiest when the mountain mist rolls in.

On campus:

  • Bring a wide lens — the symmetry of the AQ and Convocation Mall is the whole point.
  • Tucked into the northeast corner of the Academic Quadrangle, the free Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology is a small, often-deserted gallery anchored by a striking Haida frog carving by James Hart — check the limited hours before you go.
  • Just past the campus, the Burnaby Mountain lookout and its Kamui Mintara (‘Playground of the Gods’) totem poles open onto a sweeping view over the inlet — a welcome breath of open air after all that concrete.

French

  • Olivier’s Breads — an authentic French bakery literally across the street, ideal for a post-match pastry.

  • About eight minutes east, Colony Farm Regional Park (also known by its Indigenous name, ƛ̓éxətəm) trades fluorescent hush for fresh air. Flat gravel trails wind along the Coquitlam River past a community garden, with herons and other birdlife and a gorgeous glow at golden hour — a serene, open-sky way to close out a day spent indoors.

Painted lines to the horizon

The trip closes on its second confirmed Backrooms location, and it’s a quietly perfect note to end on. Urban Tennis is a sleek, modern indoor club — a full match court plus seven training courts under a high roof, painted lines marching off in every direction, the rhythmic pock of a ball echoing in all that open, fluorescent-lit space. It’s exactly the kind of ordinary, between-purposes room that the film made unforgettable, and you can book a slot and play in it yourself. Check out their Instagram video detailing the transformation.