Deadly game packs thrills
Wildly imagined sets and an inventive script make for an entertaining getaway
The amped-up psychological thriller “Escape Room” pretty much accomplishes what it sets out to do and does it fairly well. If that sounds like faint praise it’s not — exactly.
It’s just that for all its nervy creativity and fastpaced tension, this deadly twist on the escape room phenomenon — an immersive game in which players must solve riddles and clues to escape a locked room — can’t help but feel a bit empty and contrived, especially when it’s all explained away in the end.
Still, it’s a mostly fun, logic-be-damned ride if you just stay in the moment and don’t think too deeply as the going gets tough.
The inventive script by Bragi Schut (“Season of the Witch”) and Maria Melnik (story by Schut) brings together six strangers who were mysteriously invited, via a small puzzle box, to experience a Chicago escape room. The “winner” — meaning the survivor — receives $10,000.
These participants — think an older, less engaging “Breakfast Club” of types — include Jason (Jay Ellis), a slick, hard-charging finance exec; Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll), a prickly Army vet with PTSD; Mike (Tyler Labine), a genial, West Virginia trucker; Danny (Nik Dodani from TV’s “Murphy Brown” reboot), a bespectahall cled geek and escape room expert; Ben (Logan Miller), an attitudinal slacker; and Zoey (Taylor Russell), perhaps the contestant we most care about, a shy college brainiac with hidden mettle.
Mind’s-eye f lashes hint at each of their traumatic pasts that will become integral parts of the film’s puzzle.
They will all bring their strengths, such as they are, to unlock the answers needed to flee a series of booby-trapped rooms, each elaborately constructed with their own thematic brand of life-and-death trickery: a generic reception area that turns into a massive oven, a freezing faux forest with a treacherous ice floor, an upside-down pool with a hellish elevator shaft (see “Mary Poppins Returns” for a more enjoyable topsy-turvy sequence), a spooky triage unit that holds more than a few plotunraveling secrets, and a Victorian library that collapses in on itself — and its unfortunate visitor.
These outrageous sets — benign one moment, terrifying the next — are definitely the picture’s calling card (Edward Thomas’ production design and the art direction by Mark Walker are highly impressive) and become their own memorable characters, especially given the ample time we spend in most of these spots.
However, the rooms’ wildly self-destructive natures make you wonder why the hosting Maze Corporation goes to so much effort and expense only to seemingly have to start from scratch after each trial. But that’s just one of several big questions that hang there until they’re answered — or not — later on.
The film, handily directed by Adam Robitel (“Insidious: The Last Key”), contains its share of cliffhanging, race-the-clock action bits that test the players’ wits, guts, integrity and loyalty as the story evokes elements of the “Saw” and “Final Destination” franchises.
Unfortunately, the narrative gets increasingly muddled and far-fetched as we discover what brought our ill-fated characters together and why.
Thankfully, the film doesn’t overdo the snarky humor and forced hipness, much less the kind of clunky exposition we’ve come to expect from the genre.
When it comes to movies, you could do worse to escape your post-holiday blues than this one.