ESCAPE ROOM
Saw without the gore…
out now
Putting a slick, if predictable 21st Century spin on ’90s deadly game puzzlers such as The Game or Cube, this tight, trite and wholesomely violent drama can’t make all its pieces fit – but has fun trying. Director Adam Robitel nimbly corrals a fistful of unsuspecting strangers and plunges them into a succession of booby traps, with the promise of $10,000 for the winner.
The winding and decidedly generic opening introduces the lightly sketched character stereotypes, which include arrogant stockbroker Jason (Insecure’s Jay Ellis, playing tough), sullen slacker Ben (Logan Miller) and endearingly geeky student Zoey (Taylor Russell). But once the quarrelling crew are crashing through fiendishly elaborate escape chambers, the vivid against-the-clock set-pieces crank up the tension.
Picked off one by one in inventive death-or-door-key challenges in frozen Narnia-style woodlands, a drug-laced pop-art snug and a bone-crushing book room, the players discover the
game’s clues are creepily consistent with their personal traumas.
An ingeniously topsy-turvy pool-hall puzzle with a collapsing floor provides breath-holding thrills, even wringing unlikely menace from Petula Clark’s peppy ’60s ballad ‘Downtown’. The film is less adept at springing narrative surprises, its by-the-numbers plot clunking like the game rooms’ hidden machinery. Supremely efficient at sudden shocks and sly clues, it’s not sophisticated enough to pull off a late switch into paranoia-thriller territory. Teenagers will find something to chew on in the film’s ‘teamwork versus sole survivor’ themes. But older thrill-seekers might wish that Escape Room had managed to unlock something original to top off its smart scares. Kate Stables
THE VERDICT
Delivers well-crafted, teen-tuned thrills and kills, but it’s clue-less about creating compelling characters. CertifiCate 15 DireCtor Adam Robitel Starring Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Jay Ellis SCreenplay Bragi Schut, Maria Melnik DiStributor Sony running time 100 mins