No Escape

If you've seen Geek and Sundry’s 'Escape!' web series or maybe even participated in the cooperative live-action “Escape Room” games, here is a movie for you.  ‘Escape Room’ (creative name, no?) is the latest movie filed under the “low budget horror/suspense” category to hit theatres, attempting to make a quick cash grab from the escape room craze that’s been sweeping the world this decade.  What???!!! You never heard about it?

 

Directed by the accomplished Adam Robitel, whose impressive directorial credits include the sixth (and thankfully final) installment of the ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise and the fourth film of the ‘Insidious’ series, ‘Escape Room’ brings together six strangers from disparate backgrounds, puts them into various dangerous escape rooms (though some settings are outdoors), and challenges them to get out.  The prize if they successfully escape? One million, ahem, $10,000 dollars!  As you’re no doubt aware, people in escape room games must solve a series of puzzles and problems in a race against time in order to make good their escape, and in all cases success requires them to work together or they all fail as a group.  Except in this series of impossibly elaborate escape rooms, the price for failure is certain death.  Of course, our six unwary participants had little idea what they signed up for when they decided to play what they thought to be a harmless “game.”

 

A word of advice.  In order to fully appreciate ‘Escape Room,’ you must suspend all disbelief.  Do not ask any logical questions, don't overthink it, turn your skepticism switch off and, most importantly, munch on as much popcorn as possible.  There is simply no other way around it.  I’ve seen many such movies (e.g., ‘The Belko Experiment,’ ‘Saw,’ ‘Hostel,’ ‘Would You Rather,’ ‘The Tournament’ and ‘Operation: Endgame’) so knew exactly how to approach it beforehand.  And ‘Escape Room’ turned out to be as predictable and formulaic as I expected it to be, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.

Grade: B