Escape Room (2019)

Directed by: Adam Robitel | 96 minutes | action, adventure, thriller | Actors: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Jay Ellis, Tyler Labine, Deborah Ann Woll, Nik Dodani, Yorick van Wageningen, Cornelius Geaney Jr., Russell Crous, Bart Fouche, Jessica Sutton, Paul Hampshire, Vere Tindale, Kenneth Fok, Caely- Jo Levy, Jamie-Lee Money

Three films entitled ‘Escape Room’ have been released in two years, all of which are named after the activity of the same name. That says a lot. Escape rooms are a phenomenon, Hollywood quickly picks up on fads and originality is not that important in the film industry. Of the three movies around the puzzle-filled rooms in the 2019 version, the best. So the version discussed here. Something that unfortunately doesn’t say much…

In this film, six strangers meet in an escape room. The tempting amount of $10,000 convinced the puzzlers to accept the invitation. The participants soon discover that something is not right and the game is literally deadly. Only by working together can they survive the game. Still, only one person can win the amount of money.

Director Adam Robitel has a lot of cool ideas, but doesn’t take the time to work them out. He makes an attempt to flesh out his characters, but does so so quickly that his attempt fails miserably. Why should you care about these characters? More time and a less frantic pace would have done this film well.

Time has been invested in building a franchise formula, because Robitel makes no secret of the fact that he would like to make several parts around this concept. There are a lot of loose ends that hint at more. There’s a good chance that will happen. Not because of the quality, but because of the popularity of the genre.

This ‘Escape Room’ looks nice and has a few sympathetic actors whose charisma takes this horror film to a slightly higher level. The film ‘looks nice’ and that really says it all. This is wallpaper. A little thing that keeps you busy for a while, but immediately disappears from your thoughts afterwards. Still, this film is without a doubt better than the glossy ‘Escape Room’ by Will Wernick and the clunkier, eponymous version by Peter Dukes, which was released in 2017. Technically, cinematographically and acting technically, the 2019 version surpasses the older variants