RACE TO WIN LOCKS IN MILD THRILLS
A MIDDLING thriller typical of the kind of fare that can often drop at this time of year, Escape Room sometimes tippy-toes into the realm of horror, then thinks better of it.
The movie always seems to be in two minds as to whether it should be giving you a real scare, or just a mild jolt.
The title is a free tip that Escape Room is here to cash in
Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Tyler Labine, Jay Ellis. First to leave could be only one to stay on the current popularity of real-life escape rooms, where problem-solving punters are voluntarily locked away in a tricked-out enclosed space.
While lights flicker, the power cuts out and thermostats rise and fall, visitors must correctly interpret whatever clues are lying around to find the exit.
It is in one such digital-age maze that we find a random group of young American strangers, all of whom have received the same invitation to go and get lost.
The first to make their way out gets $10,000 cash.
And what of the others? Well, it is no spoiler to let slip that for some contestants, the game may be over before they ever get near that one door to freedom.
The players are a bland bunch of one-trait wonders (there’s a cocky one, a nerdy one, a needy one, a greedy one and so on), but that doesn’t matter so much. The real star of the show is the everchanging environment in which they are stuck, which can replicate anything from the inside of an oven to an open-air snowstorm.