Is Backrooms woke?
The Backrooms (2022)
TV Show
Released: January 1, 2022
Wokeness Score
0/10
Not woke
No political or woke messaging whatsoever. Focuses entirely on story, characters, fun, or escapism.
Key Summary Points
- Pure horror focus on liminal spaces, entities, and dimensional exploration with zero social messaging.
- Characters defined by roles in research institute and survival scenarios, no identity politics or diversity quotas.
- Narrative driven by scientific experiments, bureaucracy, and terror of the unknown, fully integrated without ideological overlay.
Wokeness Analysis
The Backrooms (2022) web series by Kane Parsons, often referred to as a TV series on platforms like IMDb, is a found-footage analog horror production centered on the exploration of an infinite liminal space known as the Backrooms. The narrative follows the fictional Async Research Institute's experiments with portals into this dimension, involving scientists, researchers, and found footage documenting anomalies, entities, and bureaucratic elements within the organization. There are no instances of progressive social or political messaging, identity-based representation, diversity initiatives, or social commentary on issues like race, gender, sexuality, or systemic oppression. Characters and plots serve purely to build atmospheric horror, mystery, and sci-fi tension through isolation, dread, and the unknown. The series draws from the original 2019 creepypasta and emphasizes visual aesthetics of monotonous yellow rooms, buzzing lights, and psychological unease without injecting modern ideological elements. Viewer discussions and reviews focus exclusively on its effectiveness as horror and its expansion of the lore, with no references to forced inclusivity or agenda-driven content. This aligns with traditional escapism in the genre, prioritizing story and atmosphere over any form of indoctrination or commentary.
Plot
The Backrooms (2022–) is a semi-anthological web series created by filmmaker Kane Parsons (Kane Pixels) adapting the popular creepypasta. It begins with found footage of a young man no-clipping into an endless maze of yellow-walled office rooms with buzzing fluorescent lights. The story expands to follow the Async Research Institute in the 1990s as they develop technology to access this parallel dimension for potential solutions to real-world issues like overpopulation. Episodes depict experiments, explorations, encounters with hostile entities, missing persons cases, and the organization's internal politics and cover-ups. Presented in a retro analog horror style with VHS effects, the series builds a slow-burn lore of cosmic dread, isolation, and bureaucratic horror across multiple short episodes released on YouTube.