Margaret Mitchell has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Should we hop on a call? Let’s touch base. Let’s take this offline. Let’s circle back to your last slide deck. Let’s get those action items actioned by close of play. We need stakeholder buy-in. We need deliverables. We need to make sure you’re aligned with company culture. We’re concerned you’re not leveraging your core competencies. After careful consideration, management has made the difficult decision to terminate your contract. We’re committed to helping you with this transition.

Corporate jargon is zombified language. These euphemisms and elisions are the soulless husks of words, meant to blunt the sharp edges of human emotion (sorry – ‘maintain professionalism’). And they often leave you feeling a sneaking sense of dread.

This dread has been distilled into A24’s latest psychological-horror film, Backrooms. Failed architect-turned-furniture dealer Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) finds a portal in his showroom, leading to an infernal labyrinth of office space. The idea came from a disconcerting photo of empty retail space posted to the online messaging forum 4chan. A user described the place as ‘the Backrooms’: ‘It’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz.’ The image epitomises the ‘liminal space’: those in-between places – empty hotel corridors, shuttered malls, vacant offices – devoid of human presence.

Corporate dread depends on the office to unsettle us as much as the gothic relied on ruins

Corporate dread depends on the office to unsettle us as much as the gothic relied on ruins

Was it inevitable that offices would come to haunt us? The modern office came about in the 18th century to process the vast amounts of paperwork involved in running, first, empires and, later, railroads. The multiple new levels of management that the rail companies spawned dictated the need for new organisational spaces, explains Nikil Saval in Cubed, his history of the office.

But already in 1906 there was an attempt to humanise these dehumanising spaces. The Larkin building, in Buffalo, New York, marked a significant innovation in office design in emulating a domestic setting. The building – designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to house the administrative offices of the Larkin Soap Company – appeared rigid and fortress-like from the outside, but an atrium over the workspace let in natural light and created a........

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