Escape Room (2019)

Rating: 6/10
Genre: Thriller
Related Titles: Would You Rather?, Truth or Dare, Saw
By Leanne Harragan

Six strangers travel to a strange building to complete an escape room. They must solve a set of puzzles to win $10,000. These fun challenges soon take a turn as they discover that everything is an elaborate trap. 

Escape Room is everything it says on the tin, a bunch of people trapped in an escape room that turns out to be one giant death trap. Despite it's lack of originality and similarities to franchises like Saw, this film does holds it's own and has some interesting ideas, but what really makes it worth a watch is the attention to detail that's gone into it. 

In this Escape Room, six strangers must fight their way through a collection of seven rooms/areas. Each room is based on something that is connected to one of the strangers which is revealed bit-by-bit as the stories of these strangers is revealed. As I've already said the attention to detail is incredible, with my personal favourite being the billiards bar that has been turned upside down. This can be spotted in the trailer - but in the film, it's even more amazing to see how every minor details has been kept intact, just upside down. I really liked the waiting room set too, the way it suddenly turns from a bright, breezy room into a claustrophobic sauna is pretty cool. My only problem with the design is in the last room, an unexplained drug is in the room or on their hands (it's never really elaborated upon) and it's a mind meddling drug that takes immediate affect. The idea of this is fine, but the execution is poor; everything ends up looking like a tacky Snapchat filter. This is a bit of a shame as the rest of the film looks amazing. 

It's a shame that this attention to detail doesn't speak for the whole film. Despite there being six people in the escape room, the audience is only properly introduced to three of them. Which is fine, it takes time and different sets and all the rest to properly introduce them but it's never made clear why the three introduced were chosen, they don't seem especially important or different from the rest. I'd also like to say that what we are introduced to is super clichéd with a smart girl that's too afraid to speak up, a waster that struggles to hold down a job and an overly-cocky business man. Not the most original bunch!

This detail also falls short in script writing, there are some truly terrible lines and completely cheesy moments. I disliked the ending too, where the effort to set up a sequel felt all too forced. I'd enjoy a sequel to this, but the ending was just a little too much about what the sequel could entail. Instead of this ending, more money could have been spent on a stronger marketing campaign!

Escape Room isn't the most original of films but it opens up the floor to new ideas and interesting connections and groups of people that can be used in the future. If you're planning to watch this, make sure you haven't got any escape rooms planned for the near future! 

Rating: 6/10
By Rebecca Mannick 

By no means is this a bad movie, but it also isn't a great movie. It's basically 'Saw' but less gruesome or scary. Escape Room is literally what the title says - a group of people receive a random cube to solve and once solved they are invited to an escape room with the price money of $10,000 if they escape the room. The premise of the story is that each room is meant to be triggering for the individuals involved. 

The overall concept of Escape Room is quite good - but I do think it it too similar to other established movies. Also it was far too predictable, you can kind of figure out from the trailer that there are more than one room and the winner is the last person to die. In each room one person dies - meaning the last remaining person wins the game. It isn't quite that simple but it basically moves that was throughout the movie. Some of the different escape rooms were really thought out and it was interesting for the audience to experience the different rooms and then find out the story behind the rooms. However sometimes it was quite irregular, in that some rooms got a full flashback and background why the room was set up the way it was and why certain items were placed in them - yet some rooms had literally a one line comment to the importance of the scenario. 

In terms of the acting, it was decent. There was no real standout performances and I didn't recognise any of the escape room players from any other movies. It completely left the story open for a sequel which I think will be made because by looking at the figures I think it did pretty well. Maybe in the second instalment they may use more of a horror aspect as it was definitely missing from this one.