Rating: PG-13
Director: Adam Robitel
A mysterious message and promise of a million dollar prize for the winner prompts six strangers - Jason, an anal overachiever in a suit (Jay Ellis); Taylor, a college student with a tragic past (Zoey Davis); slacker Ben, a grocery store stocker with no future (Logan Miller); Amanda, a former soldier struggling with PTSD (Deborah Ann Woll); Danny, the videogame/escape room professional (Nik Dodani); and Mike, everyone's blue collar buddy (Tyler Labine) - to show up to a small, upscale office in a nondescript building for the ultimate, all-immersive escape room experience. Almost immediately the group of strangers learns just how "all-immersive" things are, as the reception area they wait in slowly turns into a gigantic oven that threatens to burn all the contestants to death before they are forced to work together and decipher the clues at hand, barely escaping with their lives. Forced to press on and more forward in what is now obviously a game of life and death, the bickering strangers soon realize that continuing to work together is the only way to survive ... even as, one by one, their numbers dwindle from room to room, those who remain getting closer to the end of the game - and to who's behind it. I was so, SO into this film from the beginning; loved the innovation (at least to me) of the first few escape rooms, and how these characters figured out how to get out of them, but as more and more of the backstory of the characters is revealed both the rooms and the film's plot become less intriguing - the "big reveal" at the end worth the investment yet a bit of a letdown at the same time (with a decidedly corny ending, to boot). Still, overall Escape Room is one of those films that could easily become a guilty favorite; one you put on to watch over and over again when you have company, or when nothing else is on. Entertaining and with some genuinely tense/suspenseful moments, and better than "professional critics" would have you believe. Just. Plain. FUN. 7.5/10 stars
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