Review of Escape Room (2019) by Lcamoviereviews — 18 Apr 2019

I personally have never yet been to an escape room. Not because I haven't wanted to, it's just been difficult to find one in my area. I know have a center in my mall that offers it and now intend on going to it, especially after seeing this movie.

That may sound crazy but solving puzzles and using your mind is a fun experience. Just like this movie. Escape Room was a movie that came out of nowhere. I had no idea about this film until a TV spot appeared during a football game I was watching.

I found myself really interested in this film. After an opening that will send us back weeks earlier, we are introduced to almost all of our escapees receiving mysterious puzzles boxes that reveal an address to a building where a exclusive escape room they are being invited to attend.

They are all under the impression that this invite was sent to them from people they know. We immediately get bad vibes to this however because of the mysterious greeter asking for their phones not to be used in the room.

I was getting "Belko Experiment" vibes from this at this point and that is not a bad thing. I liked that movie quite a bit. The building design, at least from the outside and lobby look much like the belko building.

The set design of all the escape room is very well done. This film is far from done on the cheap then you would expect. With a budget of just over 9 million dollars, every penny is shown with creativeness of the rooms.

The film doesn't feature any big name actors except for Taylor Russell from Netflix "Lost in Space" and Deborah Ann Woll from HBO's "True Blood". That is not to say we are getting low end actors here though.

Every performance is well done. Taylor Russell is a very good actress and carries this film. Each room poses a new problem and none of it seems repetitive. With each new mystery comes new challenges and inattentiveness.

I have heard some people complain that this has too much of a "Saw" vibe. I disagree. Yes, the struggle to solve a puzzle before death is similar but not in the same way. I am so sick and tired of similarities always being brought up because of this.

All movies share in common things with other films. Does that mean that every film should be accused of this? I don't think so. Each room brings intense moments with not knowing which character is going to die or experience bodily harm.

This all leads to a interesting final act that I did not anticipate. In fact, Jason Kobasic and I were both feeling like this film could be connected to "Belko Experiment" and I would have been OK with that.

There is a lot of franchise potential in this but only if that characters that survive this film are brought back into it. I am tired of sequels to these kind of movies that just bring in new people every film and ignore the previous characters or just kill them off.

The ending did frustrate me at first up until I read an article with the film's director saying that sequels want to get made if the box office is good. Well, I am happy to report that the film has already made 64 million dollars worldwide.

Be ready people, another trip to the escape room is coming and I am ready for it.