Escape Room

Cert: 15A; Now showing

The entertainment to be had watching people younger and prettier than yourself being tormented on the big screen will never tire. In this vein, Escape Room has more to do with Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 cult sci-fi horror Cube (1997) than anything as bludgeoning as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

While not quite as gory as Cube or, say, Saw, Adam Robitel’s film does imbue its torture with a cruel computergame angle, where an agonising thread of hope exists should victims solve their way out of a series of murderous puzzles.

Six strangers from various walks of life receive mysterious invitations to an escape room facility (The Crystal Maze type that has recently become popular with corporate teambuilding and stag weekends). Among them are a high-flying financial trader (Jay Ellis), a young veteran (Deborah Ann Woll), a quiet science whizz (Taylor Russell), a store clerk (Logan Miller), a blue-collar miner (Tyler Labine) and an escape room fanboy (Nik Dodani) whose sole purpose seems to be clueing us in to where we’re at in the story.

They meet in the waiting room which subsequently turns into a rotisserie oven, and the first of six dastardly levels they must complete with their lives and team ethic in tact.

Dumb, throwaway genre kicks ahoy, as dim characters die agonisingly amid lots of shouting and the odd lull in momentum. By the same token, you could never accuse it of not doing what it says on the tin.