Title – Escape Room (2019)

Director – Adam Robitel (Insidious: The Last Key)

Cast – Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Jay Ellis, Tyler Labine, Deborah Ann Woll, Nik Dodani

Plot – Six strangers are invited to attend a secret escape room for the chance to win $10,000 but as they begin their quest to make it through the winding maze of puzzles, the group realize that the escape room is far from just a game.

“Survival is a choice”

Review by Eddie on 12/11/2019

It may not make an ounce of sense and it at times features some questionable acting and directing choices, but when watched with the right frame of mine, Escape Room is the perfect escapist piece of entertainment that will be a lot of fun for anyone that loves a good puzzle/Saw like thriller.

Taking the worlds obsession with escape rooms to a whole new level by adding a life and death spin on the popular past time activity, Adam Robitel’s low-budget but well-staged horror thriller is one of those nicely constructed genre entries that never takes itself too seriously and fully embraces it’s over the top concept to provide some memorable kills, set-pieces and twisting and turning narrative that seemingly wants to set up future installments.

Opening with a hurry as we are thrown into an escape room that doesn’t seem like a whole lot of fun, Robitel quickly introduces us to a range of characters that form the basis of our main team of escapees, with Taylor Russell’s brainiac student Zoey, Logan Miller’s supermarket working slacker Ben and Jay Ellis’s snobbish businessman Jason forming the core of our disposable group of humans, who are all nothing more than thinly drawn caricatures and pawns for the films money making concept of a genuine real life escape room where a failure means perma-death.

By very early on realizing what it is and what people want from the experience, Escape Room finds a very fun groove as we move from room to room with our collection of players that find themselves under threat from a room of fire, an icy solitude or a disappearing elevator shaft, plus other threats and the film creates a game within itself as we begin to create wagers in our minds about who will escape and who will not.

Much like recent horror success Happy Death Day, Escape Room makes a nice space for itself by providing a fun and over the top horror yarn that is more thriller than chiller and while hardcore genre fans may be disappointed by the lack of scares or gore in the film, its inventiveness and creativity will keep you entertained throughout, even if you do wish the people we are playing this game with were a little more likeable and unique, making the stakes of the whole dastardly affair that much more engaging.

Final Say –

A fun, silly and totally enjoyable romp, Escape Room is not fine dining cinema but its willingness to accept what it is and run with it means another adventure in Adam Robitel’s freshly created universe is something to look forward to.

3 defibrillators out of 5