In a way, the low expectations that come with any January release, especially in horror, can prove to be beneficial since even basic competency and imagination could be seen as almost revelatory, as backhanded as that may sound. Director, Adam Robitel, did just that with his rather nifty addition to the Insidious franchise this time last year with Insidious: The Last Key, and he does it again with his new film, Escape Room.
Based on a script by Bragi Schut and Maria Melnik, Escape Room is about a group of strangers – Zoey (Taylor Russell), Ben (Logan Miller), Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll), Mike (Tyler Labine), Jason (Jay Ellis), and Danny (Nik Dodani) – who are taking part in an escape room, but it’s quickly revealed to be far more dangerous than they had anticipated, so they must use their wits to survive and discover the secrets behind the game.
It’s a basic enough setup, but one that feels like a total no-brainer, applying a horror spin on a trendy activity like escape rooms. The key to any good gimmick film is how much it embraces the central conceit, and Escape Room takes as much advantage as it possibly can. Each puzzle feels thoroughly thought out, there’s a ton of details placed in the sets, and there’s a genuine sense of fun as you watch these characters work their way through these puzzles.
These sequences also take into account the various reactions you’d get from the characters, and how it informs their actions. The backstories of these characters are minimal, but they’re plenty functional, as we get these quick flashbacks to previous traumas, and how it shaped who they are, and how they think. The performances from the cast is uniformly solid, and they compliment this aspect of the storytelling well. They also share a fairly equal amount of screen time before things go crazy, so the order of deaths really threw me for a loop. And even though we only get minor glimpses into their past, their performances are so well informed and tuned to what they experienced in the past that you can absolutely feel what they went through just through their looks and physicality. It’s a remarkably economic and very smart way to get a lot of information across without resorting to big, morose monologues.
Unfortunately, while the ride is really fun, the ending is a major dud. It’s the kind of ending that sucks all the energy out of the room when you see it. I won’t get into too much detail about it, but it complicates the otherwise effective simplicity of the prior hundred minutes, and it turns the film into a discount Saw knock-off. It’s the sort of ending that forces your brain to try and connect certain dots, and the plot quickly falls apart. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ending was a late addition during production because it is almost jarring in how it doesn’t feel like a proper payoff to the modest ambitions in everything the film built on beforehand.
But despite that ending, I’d still say Escape Room is worth it as a fun, junky horror film. It’s an entertaining and surprisingly creative thrill ride that brings enough focus on characterization to make them worth rooting for, well, some of them, at least. The PG-13 rating never felt like it was holding anything back since the film isn’t putting its energy on gnarly deaths as much as it is on the struggle of the characters to solve the puzzles with the threat of death looming over them to generate tension. It’s hardly essential viewing, even for horror fans, but if you’re too squeamish for stuff like Cube or Saw, then this might prove to be a mighty enjoyable ride.
Just…maybe consider walking out as soon as the film goes into that “Six Months Later” epilogue at the end.