First a quick plot description, pulled from IMDB:
“Six strangers find themselves in circumstances beyond their control, and must use their wits to survive.”
The “circumstances beyond their control” would be referring to the fact that rather than a traditional escape room, they have instead been lured into a Saw-like scenario, where the consequence of failing is death.
The highlight of the movie is actually the escape room itself. I have only done two escape rooms myself, and they are tons of fun (get that on the schedule if you haven’t done one yet), so this was an aspect I was looking forward to. As those who have participated before, escape rooms typically have multiple rooms or sections to them. The one in the movie was no different. I won’t say how many rooms there are, nor go into any specifics (have to avoid spoilers), But for the most part, they were quite creatively set up and helped – to a point – distract from some of the film’s shortcomings.
There are a handful of fine to good performances here as well. Taylor Russell as genius (I think) Zoey is a bit uneven but there’s more good than bad to her character. Logan Miller’s Ben and Deborah Ann Woll’s Amanda would be the other two to highlight. They are easily the steadiest of the cast. The rest usually come off as clichéd stereotypes. It does result in a handful of sporadic funny or entertaining moments. But more often than not it was eye-rolling at best, cringe-worthy at worst.
For me – and I fully recognize this might not matter to all – I knew going into the movie that one key aspect would be how each person ended up in the game. Was there a unique reason for each individual? Was there a common thread between them all? Or could it be just random chance? And on the surface, I liked where the movie went with it. And if you leave it at that, it was fine. But as soon as you start to dig deeper, it gets worse. And it gets worse the deeper you go. So that was disappointing, but I do have to give credit for at least finding the beginning of an interesting idea.
The biggest sins of the movie come, sadly, at the very beginning and the very end. I know, not ideal. The movie opens with a scene in the escape room. You don’t know how far into the game it is, but it’s clear this character has realized the true nature of the situation. And then it jumps back to three days earlier and offers some further set up for a few of the characters. I hated this.
Right away, you know this character survives until at least that point. Sure, that scene could have been from any point after the escape room started. But the fact remains that until you reach that point again, you have no reason to worry about, or even consider, this person’s fate in the movie. And it simply wasn’t needed. The audience finds out soon enough what the movie is all about; no need to spoon feed it to them with the opening scene.
Then there’s the ending. The movie honestly would have been scored in the higher 60s, maybe even pushing 70, if not for the ending. I like to stay spoiler-free so I don’t want to say too much. But man this was bad. And it was bad for a couple reasons. The first reason being that it was just stupid. It’s that simple. The second is that it tried to end on a dramatic semi cliff-hanger to set up a potential sequel. And I get it; this kind of movie can be an easy cash-cow for a studio (Escape Room has already grossed $18 million against its $9 million budget) but this movie is not in any other way deserving of a sequel.
In the end though, I would still recommend going to see Escape Room. It’s some good, dumb fun and is a quick watch. However, if you’re still catching up on some of the late 2018 movies, by all means get those taken care of first. But if you’ve seen what you’ve wanted to see from 2018, and you need a movie to fill your time while we all wait anxiously for Glass, you could find a lot worse ways to spend a couple hours.
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