Escape Room * (2019, Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Jay Ellis, Yorick van Wageningen, Tyler Labine, Deborah Ann Woll and Nik Dodani) – Movie Review

Escape Room is watchable but it’s a cliched story, the acting is pretty bad, and the movie is pretty bad too.

Six really boring strangers are given boxes and find themselves in mystery rooms, and must use their generally dim wits to survive the deadly traps that threaten their lives, organised by Games Master WooTan Yu (Yorick van Wageningen). It turns out that all the strangers are linked in some way – of course. It also turns out that the characters have to try to escape from several rooms in a film called Escape Room.

Director Adam Robitel, maker of Insidious: The Last Key (2018), tries to spark interest in the puzzlingly generic Escape Room (2019), but fails. He would need actors and characters whose survival we care about to make this work, but he hasn’t got them.

The gimmicky story feels stale in the wake of And Then There Were None, Final Destination, Cube and, especially Saw, from which it seems to draw ideas and inspiration, and it is completely illogical, arbitrary and nonsensical, with its couple of end twists either unsurprising in one case and baffling in the other.

The main problems are the unconvincing screenplay by Bragi F Schut (also story) and Maria Melnik and the weak casting. It features Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Jay Ellis, Tyler Labine, Deborah Ann Woll and Nik Dodani.

The scoring by composer John Carey is a desperate attempt to scare things up a bit, and to an extent it works. but a composer cannot produce miracles. Yes it’s a cliched story, yes the acting is pretty bad, and yes the movie is pretty bad too.

In its defence, Adam Robitel does bring a bit of style and energy to the direction, as you would hope from a graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts with a double major in film production and acting. He does by and large keep it going, and not let it stall, except maybe a couple of times, with plenty of incident so you don’t have to think about how dumb it is or engage brain at all.

It is a horror movie, and it is fairly unhealthy stuff, with an unpleasant air of threat, some terror and perilous action, violence, some suggestive material and language, but it is all very watered down for a teen audience. It is a PG-13 in the US and a 15 in the UK.

Ironically the production company of this unoriginal film is Original Film. That is the only laugh in the whole film that takes itself way too seriously. With five basic sets and no stars, it looks cheap to make, and is at a $9,000,000 budget, and these kinds of movies are very profitable, with a $43,640,000 US gross.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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