Is Room 23 Based On A Real Location Or Fictional Setting?

Numbers with folklore significance, such as the number 23, are often included in fiction by designers who create fictional settings based on real places such as cramped, dirty boarding house rooms, sterile hospital rooms, or drab government archives. Many locations are created to have texture such as paint chipped walls and flooring as well as the sounds of flickering fluorescent lights. Once the space has been established with reality, the space can then be painted with narrative significance, such as the secrets that are kept behind the door, the whispered rumors of conspiracies, or the memories of past events that just will not go away. Most spaces referred to as “Room 23” are either completely fictional or are actual spaces that have been used in the production of an excerpt and were included in location shots. I find the blur between reality and fiction that is required to create these spaces to be a really fun and creative process that allows for a lot of imagination while still maintaining roots in reality.

If I were to make a list of settings that fascinate me and could very well exist in this reality or an alternate one, ‘Room 23’ would be near the top. Rooms like these are normally constructed to function as a compact set or even a single scene in a narrative, so they are usually filled with some sort of weirdness, great memories or just plain danger. Using a numbered room such as ‘Room 23’ serves a couple of purposes. For one, you can immediately begin to imagine the door, the key to unlock it, and the possibly bleak or worn hallway outside of it. Secondly, it is a very amorphous concept, meaning that it can translate well to metaphor. Ever wonder what someone created ‘Room 23’ for? Where did they base the space? Possibly a long-abandoned hotel or even a presently operating clinic. A old university dorm room even. In fact, maybe it was modeled after a single historic location. Production design notes for a film or TV show along with behind-the-scenes photos would likely reveal whether or not a real space was chosen for filming, or if a soundstage was used to build ‘Room 23’ for the purposes of the story. Alternate fictional spaces are similarly based. The creator of a book may base details of a character’s apartment, or single room for that matter, on something he or she has experienced first-hand in real life.

I've found production notes, set photos, and even interviews with the director or production designer to be the best sources of information. These individuals often will reveal whether or not a particular filming location was a real hotel (such as the Lux in Prague) or even an old wing of a hospital, or if the set for 'Room 23' was built on a soundstage. Literature about fictional rooms, in particular, is based off the author's own experiences in apartments and the rooms they've rented. These imaginary spaces, based off real life, make for some very memorable scenes and leave this viewer grinning from ear to ear at the writer's use of a simple door number to tell a complex and engaging story.

Short take: This is a purely fictional creation, lovingly modeled after real locations, but it’s a creation. The “creation” is mostly a composite of a pretty generic motel or cheap downtown room or university dorm room, with a few pretty accurate (to my eyes, anyway) details about such locations sprinkled throughout. The truly real details — i.e. the things that feel true to life — are the sink stains, the crooked doorframe, the faint hum of neon in the distance.

By mashing up all of these different locations the room becomes more general, so it can evoke different cities and times, and what I get from it is a sense of more universality and of creepier-ness. It’s been imagined and grounded in lots of small and very authentic details.