Escape Room is a film about six different people who decide to participate in a game that requires a group to find clues and solve riddles and puzzles in order to move to the next level, but the group has no idea how high the stakes are. They wanted to win the $10,000 prize, but it is really their lives that are on the line. Will they survive? Will anyone win?
Escape Room’s preview was ubiquitous, and I was really tempted to see it, but held strong and waited until it was available for home viewing. My idea of a nightmare is any team building exercise sans the threat of mortal danger. I’m also horrid at puzzles and riddles under pressure and would die of embarrassment as my teammates began to think that I’m an idiot because I would choke literally and figuratively. Also I’m too black to voluntarily participate in something that even holds a whiff of danger and locking me in a room with strangers sounds like kidnaping. So I was sold on the premise. The movie looked slick and interesting. I like the cast enough to root for them, but not enough to financially support them. There is a multicultural flavor. I actually like Deborah Ann Woll though I usually hate Karen in the Netflix Marvel series. I also enjoy Tyler Labine from a dreadful television series called Invasion, a delightful legal drama called Boston Legal and from a movie called Tucker and Dale vs Evil. He has been in other movies that I saw, but I don’t remember him being in them. I feel as if Labine and Kevin Corrigan are competing for the same roles, but they win their spots because they have completely opposing vibes.
Side note: I recognized Logan Miller as the horrible guy from Love, Simon, but he was a nonfactor in the decisionmaking process. He does solid work and disappears into his role, which is what a good actor does, but he does not have that breakout quality that makes him memorable, and his role probably won’t generate enough buzz to convert into currency for snagging the next role. Taylor Russell was a welcome discovery. I don’t remember her from Falling Skies, but apparently she is in an upcoming movie called Waves that looks interesting and is in the Netflix reboot of Lost in Space, which is in my queue so Russell may be the next big thing, and Escape Room was ahead of the curve. She is another chameleon like Miller, but it looks like her star is rising.
I really enjoyed Escape Room, which actually is best viewed as a Thanksgiving movie. I’m not sure if my joy was proportionate to the money that I spent. I think that I would have been happy if I bought a matinee ticket or saw it at an AMC Theater on Tuesdays, but if I spent more money, I may not feel the same. The ending may have irked me because it started to make its pitch for a sequel. I’m not saying that I would not watch a sequel. I am a completist, but I did not think that it was necessary. As a complete story, I thought that it was flawed, but better than I expected. Movies don’t get enough credit for making viewers ask a question then answering it in order to get the viewer invested in the story and the characters. I was actually interested in the characters, and I only got hints about enough of them to be intrigued, but not be able to solidly predict everything about who they were.
Escape Room was inconsistent in how thorough it was in developing all of its characters, which is an endemic problem in horror movies. For a horror movie to work, you need people to be disposable enough to feel bad when they get killed, but not so bad that it becomes a tragedy. You can have a good time figuring out the rules (and there are always rules) about how to survive and predicting who will survive. It managed to mostly create enough mystery so a viewer would wonder if one of the players was actually a villain yet reveal characters’ present and past with enough variety to not feel redundant; however the movie did not bother with a couple of characters, which was a bit of a let down and perhaps a missed opportunity. That information probably ended up on the cutting room floor because the backstory is revealed later in the movie so it definitely existed, but got lost in the shuffle.
Escape Room’s mythology does not entirely hold up under scrutiny, but I had enough fun that I didn’t care. At the third level, I was not entirely following how they solved the puzzle to get to the next level, and because this movie is not changing any lives, I did not bother to rewind to understand so I’m not sure if I’m the problem, or if the writers stumbled. When the movie had a room with only two players, it was visually cool, but I was completely checked out in spite of the spectacle because I was more intrigued by what was happening off screen, which felt like cheating to make certain plot twists plausible. I couldn’t completely buy that this world had technology that only existed in Star Trek: The Next Generation in today’s world, but it did not ruin the movie.
I hate/admire that Escape Room’s marketing team almost pegged me as a viewer because I was predictably empathizing with certain characters. I noticed that reviewers compare it to the Saw franchise, which I have never seen because I am not into torture porn. I do like the idea of an organized, conspiracy with a dash of randomness and impersonal cruelty instead of a lone nutjob with a specific grudge against the victims who takes pleasure in pain. I was disappointed that the film did not give a tad more backstory regarding the logistics of the conspiracy.
If Escape Room has an elevated point, it is mostly armchair psychology, which is one of my favorite pastimes, rooted in overcoming trauma, but I also would dare to say that it is the Snowpiercer of horror films in spirit. If Blumhouse Productions produced this film, it would have had a deliberate, well thought out socio-economic political edge, which would have transformed this film into a cult classic. It can feel derivative if you have seen a lot of movies, but at least they are solid movies: The Game, The Descent, Devil.
You should avoid Escape Room if you hate certain tropes. I predicted several scenes. It had my least favorite narrative trope, the How We Got Here introduction when the movie starts at a later point, and the majority of the film shows how that character ended up in that situation. In this film, it was not a deal breaker because it involves the premise of the movie, but I do think that it gives away too much regarding plot twists.
Escape Room was an extremely entertaining and colorful movie that mostly kept me absorbed except for a few forgivable stumbles. I would definitely recommend it. I recall it being extremely tasteful, but I’m not sure if my opinion on horror can be reliable since only J Horror truly disturbs me. I liked it. Not every movie has to change the world, and not every movie has to become a franchise.