This movie was inevitable. Escape Rooms are huge. I absolutely love them, even though I’ve only done two (hard to put together group events when you’re an introvert with social anxiety). This one looked like it’d be a total Saw ripoff. While “ripoff” would normally be a negative, I’m actually kinda on board with this. I effing love Saw, and there are two main reasons: I need to know why the players are playing and I love discovering the games. Escape Room promised both. And it delivered both, even if it was a lil watered down
Okay so a group of strangers are brought in to a mysterious escape room location and unleashed on the puzzles. While many escape rooms tend to have some type of “escape with your life” theme, this one appears to be taking that a little far…
About those two points I said I was waiting for? The games were great. While a lot of solving an escape room comes down to “look around and find the thing”, there is a puzzle solving aspect “what do I need to do with the thing”. With this movie, I was able to play along to some extent, at least as far as deciphering the clues and figuring out what objects were used for. That right there was fun enough to make this movie worth it. Sure, there were things I could never possibly solve without being in the (escape) room where it happens, but some of them I could. I may have figured some of them out a lil too quickly, but it was still a blast.
The other point, was why are they playing. There was that underlying mystery running throughout. The answer was a little unsatisfying, but I still liked having it there. The other thing that was unsatisfying was the kills. That was expected tho. Going for mass appeal with a PG-13 rating means that the blood is gonna be left for Jigsaw to handle. At least that was always secondary (actually more like tertiary) in my motivation for watching those.
The one big complaint I’ve been hearing across the board, I gotta agree with: the ending. No spoilers, but it went on too long. And they seem to be trying for franchise glory. That irks me to no end, because you can’t establish a franchise until you’re sure people are into it and you know why they’re into it. This could be a non-starter, and then you just look dumb (I’m looking at you Dark Universe).
Yeah this movie was far from perfect, but it was exactly what I signed up for, and more than you can typically expect from a January release
Escape Room – \m/ \m/ \m/ \n