*** outta *****

3 outta 5

Escape Room is not the most original movie. First off, there’s actually two other thrillers called Escape Room about the same subject. This is the only one that has had a wide theatrical release, probably because it’s an empty slot to be dumped in the release schedule the first week of the New Year. Also the component pieces of Escape Room, traps and morality, have been done a lot in horror movies. But the hell of it is, it all kind of works because the escape room scenes have a great build. It’s a movie based entirely around elaborate locked room set-pieces with continually escalating craziness that is really well done.

Several strangers get an invitation to compete in an escape room, a locked room puzzle where they must find a key to get out.  There’s the rich and snooty Jason (Jay Ellis), downtrodden smoker Ben (Logan Miller), meek student Zoey (Taylor Russell), blue collar worker Mike (Tyler Tabine), puzzle nerd Danny (Nik Dodani) and twitchy war vet Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll). Surprisingly, the room has a lot of fiery death traps and they barely escape with their lives, leading to yet another locked and deadly room. Now the six strangers need to work together to solve the obscure puzzles as they realize each room is a reflection of the darkest secrets of their lives.

Despite an extended introduction to flesh the people out it’s hard to care about many of the characters because they’re pretty whiny, even for horror movie fodder. The logical leaps the characters make to decode the traps are fairly absurd although the actors deliver it with urgency. Still, the geek who provides exposition is fun and the student seems so withdrawn she’s likable. The standout is Deborah Ann Woll as Amanda because she has an interesting back story and Woll can make simple line deliveries seem genuinely emotional. If they make it out of the escape room, they can get a $10,000 dollar prize which is a nice incentive. There’s an odd thing in the marketing wherein in the trailer for Escape Room they say the prize is 1 million dollars if they win while in the movie it is 10 grand. That seems like a really weird plot point to manipulate specifically for the ad campaign. Would audiences not see the movie if the characters only won 10 grand?

Being stuck in a murder box they have to escape feels a bit like Saw or the sci-fi movie Cube. But in Cube and Saw the deaths are gruesome which makes it impactful however since Escape Room is rated PG in Ontario nobody gets splattered. One thing this movie does crib from Saw is that the traps also act as little morality lessons for the contestants. Clues and gadgets are based around traumatic experiences like one red jacket is the same red jacket that Jason used to save his life when he was stranded on a boat. It’s not very plausible – how the hell would the escape room engineers get the exact same damn jacket – but it works as a horror movie morality play. This does lean close to Saw as there is an almost omnipotent overlord who knows everything about them as the traps are ridiculously complex. However the end of Escape Room does point to a larger mastermind conspiracy behind it all for some blatant franchise sequel bait.

Critically, what does work is that the escape room scenes are really good. This is mostly because the direction by Adam Robitel is darn slick. The film opens with a guy caught in a slowly crushing room that is genuinely freaky. Scenes are nicely constructed with escalating stakes. At first, the notion that the rooms are designed to kill them is hard to swallow because it’s a bit too absurd, even when the first person dies it could still be an elaborate cheat. But as the bodies stack up it feels more real.

Probably the best scene in the movie is when the crew ends up in an upside down room as the floors fall out from underneath them. Woll’s character is clambering upside down as they try to unlock as safe and things keep getting more difficult as the camera swoops and pushes in escalating the tension. There is one weird part where a phone is hanging upside down and then the handle suddenly drops to the floor level. How did the phone stay up there in the first place and was it the vibration of it ringing that made it fall? Anyway, each room is pretty different, fire rooms, ice rooms, locked cabins, etc. There isn’t a single dud. One room isn’t an elaborate puzzle, just flashing lights and two characters being drugged and hollering at each other. It is effectively disorienting as they start getting into trippy, melting visuals and violent fighting for the antidote as one character is conveniently yelling his deepest, darkest secrets.

Even though Escape Room owes a lot to what came before it, and is frankly a bit too bloodless to be truly scary, it is competently made. Basically every scene builds until someone figures a way out or gets offed and everybody screams. But the best part is seeing the puzzle pieces click together with finality.