The Belko Experiment (2017)
Directed by Greg McLean
No — The Belko Experiment is not woke, scoring 12 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
The Belko Experiment, a 2016 film by Greg McLean, presents a familiar scenario: office workers trapped and forced to kill.
Consciousness Markers
The film critiques corporate dehumanization and office hierarchy through an experiment run by a shadowy organization, but it lacks an explicit eat-the-rich or anti-capitalist agenda.
The cast includes several Latinx actors in prominent roles (Adria Arjona, Melonie Diaz) and is set in Bogotá, Colombia, but this reflects natural casting and setting rather than a deliberate diversity push.
Women have some agency (Dany hides and sabotages, Leandra kills Wendell), but the film contains no feminist messaging or gender-based critique.
The Bogotá setting and the exclusion of local Colombian staff by American security guards provide a faint colonial/racial subtext, but race is never explicitly addressed.
The film is a visceral horror-thriller rather than a preachy one, though it briefly gestures at human-nature experiments and corporate violence.
No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes are present in the film.
There is no environmental or climate-related content.
No body positivity themes or diverse body representations are present.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are depicted.
The film is entirely fictional and does not engage with historical revisionism.
Why it received this score
The Belko Experiment, a 2016 film by Greg McLean, presents a familiar scenario: office workers trapped and forced to kill. It arrives with cultural baggage, yet upon inspection, it proves remarkably resistant to the progressive sensibilities that often populate modern genre fare. We expect a film about corporate dehumanization to lean into anti-capitalist rhetoric, but it does so only faintly. The setting in Bogotá, Colombia, and the presence of Latinx actors like Adria Arjona and Melonie Diaz offer a patina of diversity, but this is incidental to the story, not a deliberate statement. The film has no interest in LGBTQ+ themes, body positivity, neurodivergence, or climate concerns. Its feminism is limited to women who occasionally fight back, not a systemic critique. So we begin with a work that is, in current parlance, unaware.
Where the film does gesture toward social consciousness, it is lightly done. The corporate experiment run by a shadowy organization suggests a critique of unchecked capitalism, but the film treats this as a backdrop for violence, not a call to arms. The racial dynamics of American security guards turning away local Colombian staff hint at colonial subtext, yet race is never explicitly addressed. The female characters have moments of agency, like Dany hiding in the basement and Leandra killing Wendell, but these are survival instincts, not feminist messaging. The film's lecture energy is minimal; it prefers splatter to sermon. It is a horror-thriller that entertains without preaching, which in today's landscape is almost a novelty.
In the end, The Belko Experiment scores low on the contemporary cultural awareness scale. It is a visceral, mean piece of entertainment that cares more about exploding heads than about representation or social justice. Its anti-capitalist leanings are too vague to count as an agenda, and its diversity is a matter of casting and location, not ideology. The film does not lecture, does not revise history, and does not champion any cause beyond survival. For scorekeepers, it is a relic of a pre-2015 sensibility, a bloody diversion that asks nothing of its audience except a strong stomach. And sometimes, that is enough.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A group of eighty American workers are locked in their office and ordered by an unknown voice to participate in a twisted game.
Questions about The Belko Experiment
Is The Belko Experiment woke?
No — The Belko Experiment is not woke, scoring 12 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does The Belko Experiment have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Eat the Rich at 25.
How does The Belko Experiment compare to other 2017 movies?
It ranks #138 of the 309 films from 2017 we've scored; their average is 19. The wokest is I Am Not Your Negro (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.