Imagine hearing a polite Indonesian farewell — warm, formal, recorded for extraterrestrial life — echoing through the yellow, fluorescent-lit corridors of a horror film. That's exactly what happened in Backrooms, A24's new sci-fi horror, and Indonesian audiences on social media lost it.

The scene went viral almost immediately after @iPopBase posted a clip on X. In it, actor Chiwetel Ejiofor wanders a long, empty corridor with walls the color of old office paint. Then, cutting through the silence, a voice says: "Selamat malam, hadirin sekalian. Selamat berpisah dan sampai bertemu lagi di lain waktu."

What Is NASA's Golden Record — and Why Is an Indonesian Voice on It?

The Golden Record is a phonograph disc launched by NASA aboard Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1977. It contains sounds, music, images, and greetings representing cultures from across Earth — intended as a message to any intelligent life that might one day find it. 

Indonesia's cultural contribution to the record is significant: it includes the greeting by Ilyas Harun, the Javanese gamelan piece "Ketawang Puspawarna" composed by Mangkunegara IV, and a photograph of a Balinese dancer. Three distinct cultural artifacts from one archipelago, now traveling billions of kilometers from home. 

As of today, Ilyas Harun's voice can still be heard on NASA's official website. The greeting he recorded nearly five decades ago was never meant for a movie theater. It was meant for the universe. 

Why Did the Scene Hit So Hard for Indonesian Audiences?

The Backrooms concept — endless, liminal rooms that feel deeply wrong despite looking completely ordinary — already creates psychological dread before a single word is spoken. Add a familiar language in a place where no familiar language should exist, and the effect becomes genuinely unsettling.

"Selamat malam, hadirin sekalian. Selamat berpisah dan sampai bertemu lagi di lain waktu." — Ilyas Harun, NASA Golden Record, 1977

The greeting translates roughly to: "Good evening, everyone. Goodbye, and until we meet again." In the context of a horror corridor with no exit, it lands like a sentence from a ghost.

Many viewers initially assumed the audio was produced specifically for the film. The discovery that it came from an actual NASA archive — one that has existed in space for nearly half a century — made the moment feel stranger and more poetic at the same time.

From YouTube to A24: How Backrooms Became a Film

Backrooms originated from a viral internet creepypasta concept and was developed into a feature film by first-time director Kane Parsons, with the screenplay written by Will Soodik under production house A24. 

The film stars Chiwetel Ejiofor alongside Renate Reinsve, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell — an actress of Indonesian-American descent — making Indonesia's presence in the film both sonic and human. 

The counterintuitive twist here: a recording meant to communicate peace and warmth to alien civilizations is now being used to make humans feel afraid. There's something almost philosophical about that.