For the uninitiated, Liminal Spaces are basically places meant for you to walk through. Corridors, hallways, passages, indoor paths. Stuff like that. Areas in the architecture meant to take foot traffic from an entrance to the destination. Hospital hallways, airport terminals, train stations, service tunnels and libraries. Places like that.
With that out of the way, let's talk about them! But first I want to ask a question: what do you like about these liminal spaces?
Everyone's got their favorite kind of horror, and admittedly liminal spaces became a meme in recent years. What I want to talk about is what got people so interested in liminal spaces in the first place. There's something that drew us in and exploded into a recognizable subgenre of horror.
I view horror as a commentary about life, not death. In that vein, I see liminal spaces as a horror for people who work jobs that have them exploring these areas often. A (lacking better words) working class focused kind of horror, where people are lost in recognizable places that look like the place they work at, but not getting anywhere. Like a metaphor for how they see their life as constantly moving forward but not getting anywhere. Lost in these places they must visit for their job, only aware of their existence in the first place because they need to cross through at some point.
What I like about liminal spaces is how someone can detect a threat by looking at the space in question. After all, there's nothing there. Just an empty place, but as for why it's empty and suggests infinity just tantalizes the imagination. And the scariest things are in your own imagination!
For media that features liminal spaces, I suppose there are a handful that plays with similar ideas that I've seen personally. Mind you they're not perfect examples, but they feature characteristics that I think they have in common with liminal spaces.
Twilight Zone, 1959 season 1, episode 1 "Where is Everybody?"
While there isn't literally a liminal space the protagonist is exploring, the fear of not finding a soul after exploring for so long is where I see the connection. Familiar places, abandoned, searching in vain for someone, anyone, to just be there.
I personally enjoy my solitude, but even I have anxious moments over feeling isolated and left behind. As if the world literally moved on without me and what's left is a shell of the world. Discarded by those who left it and forgot all about it, leaving behind one person to seek any sign of life that they will never find.
Dark Floors, 2008, features Finnish metal band Lordi in their creature gear.
This is an underrated gem and features a talented and cool as hell band. The story is simple: group of people try to escape a hospital that defies all logic and reasoning, while being stalked by the creatures within.
I won't spoil anything, because I want folks to see it. But liminal spaces could take something from Dark Floors. It's more populated in terms of characters, but the setting is very cool.
That's enough out of me, I want to hear from y'all?
What did you like about liminal spaces?