Watched: 10/04/2026
Format: HBOmax
Viewing: First
Director: Kane Parsons
During lockdown, I went down a lot of YouTube holes. One of the ways I wasted my hours was watching "urban exploration" - videos of people going into facilities and structures which have been abandoned.
These videos cover everything from empty hospitals with equipment collecting dust to prisons with rotting bars to defunct mega-construction projects in China. Some folks hit old forts and underground military bunkers left over from the Cold War. And houses - often mansions, that have simply been left to rot.
The videos are always marginally disturbing. Buildings are *designed*. They have purpose where form meets function. You can see the massive expense for these places, from the labor needed to build them to the equipment and furnishings. And then... something happened and everyone went away.
The buildings, tunnels, etc.. are left to decay. America's former malls are a wild thing to behold. Nature reclaims what it can, rain comes through ceilings, vines and mold grow in odd places. a layer of dust a half inch thick may have formed in the older examples.
