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Rating: 1 out of 5
I have been wanting to do an escape room for years now. My mom, aunt, and cousins did one. Even though they said they didn’t finish in time, they had a blast. I am still trying to convince my friends to go. One said absolutely not because she would get frustrated. I would either try really hard to solve the problems or just give up and laugh my way through. I still think it would be a fun thing to do because everyone needs some challenges in their life.
In the late 2010s, there was an explosion of films that revolved around the concept of an escape room. Each one of these films was from the horror genre. Maybe one was good, but the others were blah. Many of them have the same storyline. A group of people gets invited to do an escape room, and they roll up to be killed. The 2017 version, Escape Room, is no different.
This decent horror film revolves around six “friends” who prepare to live an exciting experience to celebrate the birthday of Tyler (Williams). Tyler’s beautiful girlfriend, Christen (Hower), announces at dinner that she has a wonderful surprise. She has gotten six tickets to a secret escape room. She wants to do it because it is the grand new thing with solving a series of riddles in order to get out of the place where they will be locked up. Even though there are seven friends, one skips out to go to another party. It is never explained what happened to her, nor should anyone care. The friends decided to pair up: Tabby (Delson), Tyler’s sister, Conrad (Ierardi), Anderson (Johnson) and Natasha (Stephenson), Tyler, and Christen. The group gets in a van and drives them to an unknown location. Once the group arrives, they are blindfolded following instructions from Christen, who had received them from the mysterious organization. The game starts as each couple is left in a different room, isolated from each other, with their own puzzle to solve. Natasha and Anderson are married, but there is significant tension between them. Tabby and Conrad are left in another room, while Tyler is left alone without Christen. After the friends solve the first puzzle, things become complicated when they realize Christen is locked in a cage, naked (key detail). The five friends soon realize that the game is about to become deadly.
When watching this film, you can tell it is low-budget but had some potential. The first couple of puzzles were interesting and a tad bit complicated, but as the story went on, you wondered if you were watching some low-ass awful version of Saw. You don’t know who the actual escape room is focused on. Throughout the film, the entire thing seemed directed at Tyler. He was the movie’s main focus, as all the puzzles seemed to revolve around him. The group had to look through a newspaper, and the clue dealt with ego. Another puzzle played a song that he hated and drove him insane. He kept all the secret keys from each puzzle, and he was completely unhinged when he reached the end. The film portrayed Tyler as this a perfect person with deduction skills that rivaled Sherlock Holmes, but he was an egomaniac and had an extreme temper which showed in the end.
This was a problem with the whole film because all the side characters were nonexistent and brought their own shit to the film. The supporting characters were unimpressive. Tabby and Conrad were the horny and dimwitted couple. They were the highly sexual couple that just kissed through the whole film. They were unamusing and had nothing to give to the movie, as Conrad was a fucking douche. When the shit hit the fan, and they died a horrible death, it wasn’t like you cared at all. The second couple, Anderson and Natasha, had more appeal as they were married, but the tension was between them. Natasha slept with Tyler and had his thing on her mind. She was jealous and didn’t think of her husband until he met his untimely death. The film never really explained what happened to Natasha after Tyler left her broken arm ass behind.
The ending was a headscratcher for me. The twist was that Tyler died because he was an asshole, and Christen is released from her cage that was in the back of some van. She walks butt-ass naked to some payphone in the dark on some abandoned street. She calls the cops until the phone is hacked by the person in charge of the game. In some Saw-like theme that made no sense, he questions her and makes it seem like she is still part of the game. She passed out after talking. It made you think if the focus was really on Tyler or Christen. Too many questions to care about, and no need to venture into them.
The acting was whatever. I’ll give you a twenty-second idea of what I thought. Evan Williams was over the top sometimes and went off the wall as Tyler. He was about as believable as a yeti. Annabelle Stephenson was smokin’ as Natasha but a total bitch who wanted that D. She treated her husband like shit, but I’ll go after her. Elisabeth Hower was also smokin and beautiful as Christen but didn’t have enough screen time to matter. Towards the end, you weren’t invested. I am going to stop because everyone else really didn’t matter.
This film was a bore and can be skipped over with all the other escape room films. It is like all the others; once you see one, you have seen them all because the concept is the same. The only good thing about this film is that you can have a sigh of relief when it ends. Rather than watching this film, you can do an escape room and have way more fun.
