![]() ![]() That film definitely isn’t Escape’s Escape Room. Ultimately, one of these films builds its characters up well enough to make you feel somewhat bad about their death. There’s also an Asian American woman in the group, but she doesn’t attend the escape room because she had a “sexy party” to go to. One’s his sister, and we know this because her first word of dialogue is “Brother!” Another’s her boyfriend, a grinning GMO hybrid of Billy Zane and Paul Walker (pictured above and to the right). There’s hardly anything to define his group. And Daredevil‘s Deborah Ann Woll plays an army vet who really just needs the cash.Įscape’s Escape Room is pretty much filled with rich white people attending a super exclusive escape room as a gift to a birthday boy who showed absolutely no interest in such things (he rolls with it anyway to please his unthoughtful girlfriend). There’s an extremely likeable middle-aged truckie who takes part for the sake of his son. One girl’s a tertiary genius still reeling from the trauma of a plane crash. They’re a culturally diverse lot, traversing different ages and economic classes, and the film gets props for giving each of them a rounded backstory. Sony’s Escape Room sees six strangers compete in a mysterious escape room with the promise of a lumpy cash prize. Sony’s Escape Room (left) & Escape’s Escape Room (right) The characters Which Escape Room is the better Escape Room, in my blunt opinion? I graded each based on five different criteria. Nevertheless, I’m an internet film critic, and I’ve got things to say about them. Or what an internet film critic like me has to say about them. It may seem bleedingly obvious to you which film’s gonna be the better of the two, but you never want to judge a film by its poster. The straight-to-VOD offering comes from Escape Productions, which I’ll call-erm- Escape’s Escape Room, I guess. ![]() The cinematic release comes from Sony Pictures, which I’ll call Sony’s Escape Room. Statistically, some of them had to go “Yep, sounds good.” Now we’re in an awkward position where there are two escape room films called ‘Escape Room’ available to watch and-surprisingly-neither one’s a Blumhouse Production. But predictable story beats and the movie's extreme reliance on suspension of disbelief keep Escape Room from rising too high above the genre.“It’s like an actual escape room, except it’s REAL and the characters could DIE.” I’m guessing a heap of Hollywood producers had to hear this horror movie pitch within the last few years. There's some fun to be had, a few laughs, and a reasonable amount of tension throughout, with only a few jumping-out-of-the-cupboard startle scares. Escape Room is tailored for a younger audience, and it's certainly not as ugly as the gorier franchise - and, thankfully, it has less of that series' bitter, faux moralistic overtones. Plus, with its ultra-elaborate traps and unlikely amount of insider knowledge about the players, the movie can't "escape" comparisons to the much more violent, much crueler torture-porn franchise Saw. ![]() Its 10 Little Indians structure (picking off characters one at a time) and standard moral compass prevent the story from delivering significant surprises. And some are so implausible that they're likely to shake viewers out of the film. Some traps allow viewers to think along others require information we're not given. Some of the characters are drawn in detail, while others are thumbnail sketches leaning toward cliché. But the movie is inconsistent in just about every other way. And some of the performances, including Russell's sympathetic lead work, are good. Production designer Edward Thomas ( Doctor Who) is the MVP. The most fun parts of Escape Room are the occasional solvable puzzle and the detail and imagination in the sets. This horror film/thriller has its virtues, but it badly strains viewers' suspension of disbelief and can't avoid feeling like Saw with duller teeth.
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