Escape Room is a psychological thriller film that was released on January 4th of 2019. I'm only getting to it now cause I've been sick for, like, this entire year. I'm also working on a top movies of 2018 list, so there's that. This movie was directed by Adam Robitei, and the screenplay was written by Bragi F. Schut and Maria Melnik. The cast consists of a group of people I had never heard of until now, such as Taylor Russell (who plays Zoey), Logan Miller (who plays Ben), Jay Ellis (who plays Jason), Tyler Labine (who plays Mike), Deborah Ann Woll (who plays Amanda), and Nik Dodani (who plays Danny). After a good trailer, I had somewhat high hopes for this movie, and I'm happy to report that it (mostly) met those hopes. In this review, I will explain what I mean. Let there be spoilers.
Firstly, let's talk about the characters. These characters are just one-note stereotypes with one or two traits that make them stand out from each other. Yes, they have admittedly sad backstories that are decently fleshed out, but these scenes ultimately don't add much to the story aside from one of the puzzle rooms. The characters were still somewhat bland overall. We have Zoey (the token smart girl), Ben (the token alcoholic), Jason (the token rich jerk), Mike (the token redneck), Amanda (the token fighter), and Danny (the token nerd). In terms of characteristics, there isn't much here. They only exist to show off the elaborate trap rooms. What makes them interesting, to me, is the cast. These actors do a fantastic job with their characters. Every player has one, maybe two, personality traits, but the actors play them so believably that it's impossible not to be invested in them. The fact that I didn't know who any of them were made it even better. I've never seen them in anything else, so I don't know what they're capable of. But I do now! The characters are cliches, yes, but they feel real thanks to the actors. They behave the way any normal person would if they were stuck in these rooms: Equal parts freaked out and level-headed, using their traits and their brains to solve the puzzles, and they work together quite well for the most part. Long story short: I loved the characters in this film.
Given that this is a movie centered around escape rooms, it's a given that those rooms will have to be interesting. I'm pleased to announce that the escape rooms in Escape Room were very good! There were seven levels, and each of them (with the exception of one) are brilliantly designed. They're intricate, they're elaborate, they each require an immense amount of attentiveness and teamwork to complete (even more so than any real escape rooms due to the fact that the rooms in this movie can actually kill you if you fail). They don't follow a rising difficulty track (although that would've been cool), they instead feel like a series of challenges that happen to you one at a time. However, in these rooms, you die if you don't solve the puzzle. This, alongside the solid acting and cinematography, is a sure fire way to build up a genuinely intense atmosphere (which this movie did indeed have). My favorite rooms were the up-side-down room, the Disney acid sequence room, and the cold room. These really interesting puzzles leads to the characters putting aside their differences as much as they can and working together to find a way out of the rooms. Some characters prove to me more useful than others, yes, but they all do their part. I really admired that, it helped ground the characters even further into reality. I also really liked that the fact that the puzzles have a specific way of being solved that was scripted by the Game Master. Any attempts to deviate from these set paths would usually end up getting a character punished. I say "usually" cause the characters don't do that very often. I counted three times, two of which resulted in punishment. It was nice to see, even if the means of getting there weren't so nice.
This movie handles the rooms and the puzzles very well, in my opinion, but that doesn't excuse those select moments when a character that's already been established to be at least a little attentive makes a truly horrible decision that, more often than not, results in someone dying. A particularly infuriating example happens in the ice room. Mike fishes a key encapsulated in a block of ice out of a body of water, then Ben's lighter is requested so they can melt the block. Rather than calmly handing the lighter over to Danny like any normal human would, he angrily tosses the lighter at him. It slides across the ice, and (by God's grace) doesn't fall into the hole in the ice. This results in Danny, the one that knows the most about escape rooms out of all of the players, drowning when the ice underneath him gives way. Yes, that probably would've happened regardless, but it still irked me that Ben acted out of character like that. Also, in the hospital room (which has another very well put-together puzzle), Jason cleverly deduces the answer as involving an EKG machine and someone's heartrate. To his credit, it isn't initially made clear as to what specific frequency the monitor has to be on. However, that doesn't excuse when Jason decides to play God by intentionally raising Mike's heartrate by using the defibrillators. This, naturally, results in Mike getting killed off. This one doesn't salt my avocado as much as Danny's death did, cause I probably would've done the same thing, but it still ultimately felt like a wasted death. I do legitimately enjoy that the players actively think outside the box when it comes to solving the puzzles, though. It's the moments when they act out of character that I take issue with.
Now, throughout the movie, I was captivated by the complexity of the puzzles, the way the characters interacted with each other, there was a genuinely interesting mystery that was built up as the story progressed. And then the ending came along and completely flatlined everything in one fell swoop. The ending of this movie feels tacked on, forced, and extremely cheap. It's as if a completely different movie had been accidentally spliced into this one. I don't know where to start, so let's just take it from the top. Zoey (the top-billed main character) apparently dies from ingesting poisoned gas after she freaks out and starts smashing the cameras in the hospital room. The EKG puzzle is solved, Ben and Jason make it into the next room safe and sound, but Zoey stays behind to break some more cameras (y'know, as one does). We witness her coughing up her lungs because of and then ultimately succumbing to the gas, ending with her lifelessly falling to the floor mere inches away from a gas mask. The camera cuts away from her after that, and we don't see her again until the finale. In my eyes, she's dead. We saw the life leave her eyes, she's dead. Then, right the heck out of nowhere, two people in hazmat suits burst into the room and see Zoey's body. Zoey stands up and knocks them out. It's implied she used the gas mask, but I don't believe it. Again, we watched her become one with the poison gas. Is Zoey immortal, cause it really seems like she's immortal. Jason dies in the LSD room, Ben escapes, he falls into the moving walls room that we saw hinted at in the opening scene (which was a really cool tie-in, not gonna lie), Zoey activates Monster Reborn on herself, and we finally come face to face with the Game Master, only for him to promptly be killed off less than five minutes after we first see him. A, that's evidence that they now no longer have. B, I'm still floored by Zoey's adamantium lungs. And, C, turning Zoey from this shy, adorable genius into friggin' Rambo in a span of two seconds was very jarring. It was cool, yeah, but it comes so far out of left field that it feels like an in-between scene was missing. It feels like I missed something, but I don't think I did. I'm happy to say that the very, very ending is somewhat redeemable. Ben and Zoey escape the rooms, Ben is put in the hospital to treat the injuries he collected throughout the puzzles, and then Zoey is taken back to the scene of the crime for a moment by some cops. She finds that everything is gone. In reality, Ben and Zoey never fully escaped the room. That is, in all honesty, not a bad twist. A little too sequel bait-y for my tastes, but I can accept it. Wow, I really went off on a tangent there, didn't I? I'm sorry about that. This ending just really grinded my gears.
Going back to being positive for a bit, I really liked the cinematography. The shots that show off how elaborate the rooms are were so good. My favorite series of shots came in the up-side-down room and the LSD room scenes. With the up-side-down room, the camera showcases some really neat tricks, like the first time the camera flips over on it's head to give us the initial reveal that the room is up-side-down. I love the shot of the phone falling down into Mike's hands. The collapsing floor mechanic was fun, too. It's sad that Amanda died during this scene, but the fact that it was via heroic sacrifice made it sweeter. And, the LSD sequence was very good. I could've gone without the flashing lights, but everything else was fun. Ben's face starts melting, the screen starts distorting, I was half expecting a Pink Elephant to jump out and sing a song. It's a really well-shot sequence. This whole movie was full of well-shot sequences, but those two stuck out to me more than the others. Oh, also, the trailer spoiled some of the plot-impacting deaths. That's a thing that happened, and we should all be ashamed that it happened.
All in all, Escape Room is a mixed bag with much more hits in it than misses. The cast was very good, the puzzles were well-designed, it was well-shot, it had decent dialogue, and a semi-solid story. However, I felt like the ending, the occasional poor character decision, and a couple really logic-defying plot elements were holding the film back from achieving it's true potential. Yes, the positives outweigh the negatives, but the negatives are pretty big when you stop and think about them. But, overall, I enjoyed Escape Room. It was good. If I had to describe it in just one sentence, I'd say, "If Sherlock Holmes went through a Saw trap". That just about sums it up. I give it a 7.5/10. The next movie I see will either be Alita: Battle Angel or Glass. Haven't decided yet. Happy Groundhog's Day.
