Director: Will Wernick
Writer: Noah Dorsey (Screenplay) Will Wernick, Noah Dorsey (Story)
Starring: Evan Williams, Annabelle Stephenson, Elisabeth Hower, Dan J Johnson, John Ierardi, Kelly Delson, Iris Avalee
Plot: Four friends test their intelligence in a game that takes a dark turn.
Tagline – Will you survive?
Runtime: 1 Hour 21 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Verdict: The Saw of Escape Rooms
Story: Escape Room starts with Tyler’s (Williams) birthday, Christen (Hower) surprised her boyfriend and their friends Natasha (Stephenson), Anderson (Johnson), Conrad (Ierardi) and Tabby (Delson) to attend an escape room.
With Christen setting the night up, she leaves the five friends to navigate their way through the escape rooms where they must look to save Christen before the timer runs out as the game turns out to be very real indeed.
Thoughts on Escape Room
Characters – Tyler is the birthday man he is highly intelligent thriving in being about to solve problems which does make the escape room a perfect choice for him. Being this intelligent doesn’t make him the most likeable character as he is often looking down on his friends. Christen is the one that arranges the escape room for her boyfriend, she knows it would be perfect for them and arranges to pay for them all, only she is the one being held captive in need of rescue in this game. Natasha is the friend that clearly has a crush or a past relationship with Tyler, she is there to try and be with him. Anderson is the smart but clumsy one of the group, he can help solve the puzzles, but is reckless in the way he goes about things. Conrad and Tabby are two of the other friends that are more interested in hooking up than anything else.
Performances – Evan Williams in the leading role does the best job in the film, because we are meant to hate him and he makes us hate him through the film. The rest of the performances are not on a good level, mostly overreactions that are just panic riddled.
Story – The story here follows a group of friends that put into an escape room for a birthday surprise, but it soon turns into a real battle of life and death. Think saw only as an Escape Room concept over just a serial killer testing people. It starts slow because just watching people do an Escape Room isn’t the most interesting thing to watch, once the stacks get raised we now want to know just what is happening. The problems come from the final reveal of what is going on, with an act that doesn’t seem to make the most sense when you look at the full story. we do have strange decisions going on and having the random girl naked in a cage only confuses.
Horror – The horror in the film doesn’t start early, but once it does we can see the Saw fans enjoying elements of this film.
Settings – The film is set in the Escape Room which already locks the characters away from safety and willingly for the most part of the film. the rooms are filled with clues on how the escape.
Special Effects – The effects do come off strong once we see how real the game has become, which mostly looks at the traps being left in the escape rooms.
Scene of the Movie – This is a real game, that moment makes things a lot more interesting.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – How are there perfectly placed cameras for Christen to watch.
Final Thoughts – This is a horror thriller that does take time to get going, once things intensify we are all in before a confusing conclusion which will leave you scratching your head.
Overall: Horror Thriller that falls flat in the end.
Rating
