Why Dead Malls Are the Perfect Horror Setting
There’s a reason horror keeps coming back to the shopping mall. George Romero put zombies in one in 1978. Dan Bell built a whole YouTube series around walking through empty ones. The internet’s liminal-space obsession runs on photos of abandoned food courts. And this October, The Consumed puts you on the night shift at one. So what is it about a dead mall that gets under our skin? 1. It Was Built for Crowds A mall only makes sense full of people. Its wide concourses, endless benches, and food court seating for hundreds were all designed around a crowd. Take the crowd away and the building starts to feel wrong, like a stage after the play has closed. That gap between what a space is for and what’s happening in it is the core of liminal horror. Your brain keeps expecting people, and nobody comes. ...