7 & 7 Review: Escape Room (2019)
- Directed by: Adam Robitel
- Written by:Bragi F. Schut and Maria Melnik
- Starring: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Tyler Labine, Jay Ellis and Nik Dodani
Six strangers find themselves in a maze of deadly mystery rooms, and must use their wits to survive.
- Escape Rooms – The movie is a maze of various escape rooms concocted with some life-or-death scenario, it is a pretty interesting and unique premise for a movie. And I think the film does a great job of exploiting it.
- A Room of Fire and Ice – The movie has the whole video game logic down, you’ll explore a fire room, there’s an ice room, there’s a somewhat desert room and then some one-offs like a hospital setting. It sounds generic, but it does work, and really does make each challenge feel unique.
- Survivor Series – SPOILERS. Part of the twist in the movie is that these rooms are in some fashion designed to mimic the results of the competitors most traumatic moments, but due to the nature of deaths and stuff, we don’t always get a clear parallel as to what is going on and the characters’ backstory.
- The Castoffs – The cast of characters we are offered are, for the most part, likable, I know that’s feint praise but in horror movies it’s not always a guarantee. By the end of the movie, I would say I was invested in almost all of the characters’ survival and did feel for some of the deaths.
- Puzzles and no Dragons – I like the set-up, I like the characters, I like the Escape Room, but I feel like the movie didn’t necessarily know how to connect them all so that they worked in concert. Part of it is we don’t learn the real reason behind the movie until late into the 3rd act so the stakes and reasons are never made clear until that point.
- Sterile Room – SPOILERS. The big twist of the movie is that the escape rooms was set-up by a game’s master for the entertainment of the highly well-off so in that regard it’s very similar to the Battle Royale/Hunger Games movies set-up. The movie goes into it a bit, but because we never see these bets or stakes, it just feels like a twist-for-twist sake and…
- No Way Out – The last 15 minutes or so of this movie is nothing more than a shameless set-up for a sequel/series of Escape Room movies. Like it doesn’t even offer a proper resolution to this movie, it just keeps on going and going.
Review 5 (Out of 7) – The movie has a fun, unique hook and for most of the runtime does well with it, it’s just sad that the ending goes on forever and ever for sequels.