Review: 'Escape Room' lives up to its name
It’s rare to find a film that would benefit from focusing less on story, but Escape Room is one of those rare films. The title pretty much explains the entire premise of the film, which is that a seemingly random group of individuals are trapped in a series of deadly escape rooms. It attempts to give a coherent reason for why the five participants were specially selected for this Herculean endeavour, but let’s be honest. You’re not here for a gripping detective drama, nor are you watching Escape Room to unravel a convoluted mystery.
You’re watching Escape Room to see people attempt to escape imaginative, larger than life traps by piecing together clues and hints in each room. The set pieces are what you’re here to watch, and each one feels like it would fit right in in the climax of a James Bond (or any other action) film. This is what the film should have focused on — topping each ludicrous but thrilling escape room adventure as the film progresses, where anything is possible.
Escape Room does attempt to tell some sort of story, with an overarching plot, plenty of sequel potential, and backstories for all the characters. However, the tragic tale of each character (and the accompanying flashback) is completely unnecessary. You don’t care about any of the characters (save for Deborah Ann Woll’s PTSD-suffering former Special Forces character) because they’re pretty bland. Sure, you can tell them apart — but they’re the stereotypical characters you’ll find in such horror movies, and don’t break much ground. To be fair, the cast don’t have much to work with, which is why the characterisation is so poor for the main characters.
Despite all this, Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll) is wonderful. She’s given an action sequence that leverages on her character’s Special Forces background, which means that Amanda plays to the strengths of the movie — high adrenaline scenes rather than attempted character studies. She also reacts to the entire escape room premise in the most believable way, taking the threat seriously from the get go. The other characters also react to the traps they face in the escape rooms, but they’re kind of blase about what happens.
The action scenes are imaginative and intense, and harken back to Indiana Jones style puzzles (in different settings, of course) which have you on the edge of your seat as the heroes literally only manage to escape by a hair’s breadth. They also cover the gamut of different sort of traps that villains place, from freezing temperatures to raging fires, deep chasms to poison gas. The set pieces are genuinely exciting and live to the expectations of a movie titled Escape Room.
My only quibble would be that it’s not entirely possible for the audience to “solve” the puzzle ahead of, or alongside the characters. It’s the characters who explain what must be done next and the puzzles are solved at a pretty chipper pace. If the audience were presented with enough information in each scene to solve the puzzle, it would have been even truer to the concept.
Escape Room is a pretty good thriller and makes for an entertaining night out at the theatre. You can gloss over the character backgrounds, as they’re pretty perfunctory — but get ready when the action starts. Escape Room certainly lives up to its name.
Should you watch this at weekday movie ticket prices? Yes.
Should you watch this at weekend movie ticket prices? No.
Secret ending? No.
Score: 2.75/5
Running time: 100 minutes (~2. 75 hours)
Escape Room is a horror-thriller film.
The movie revolves around a series of characters who are forced to solve a series of lethal escape rooms, in return for a (fairly) grand prize. However, they soon learn there’s more than meets the eye to the whole setup.
Escape Room is directed by Adam Robitel and written by Bragi F. Schut, with additional screenplay credits for Maria Melnik. It stars Taylor Russell (Zoey Davis), Logan Miller (Ben Miller), Deborah Ann Woll (Amanda Harper), Tyler Labine (Mike Nolan), Jay Ellis (Jason Walker), Nik Dodani (Danny Khan), and Yorick van Wageningen (the Gamemaster). It is rated PG-13.
Escape Room opens in cinemas:
– 10 January, 2o19 (Singapore)
Marcus Goh is a television scriptwriter, having written for popular shows like “Lion Mums”, “Crimewatch”, “Code of Law”, “Incredible Tales”, and “Police & Thief”. He’s also a Transformers enthusiast and avid pop culture scholar. You can find him on social media as Optimarcus and on his site. The views expressed are his own.
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