Escape Room Movie Review: A Literal Chock-A-Block Choke Your Cheer Experience!

It'll hold your breath and make you forget how you aren't breathing for a long time - along with keeping you interested in it.

- January 31, 2019 | 10:52 PM IST

Escape Room Movie Review Rating: 3.5/5 Stars (Three and a half stars)

Star Cast: Deborah Ann Woll, Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Tyler Labine, Jay Ellis, Nik Dodani

Director: Adam Robitel

Escape Room Movie Review: A Literal Chock-A-Block Choke Your Cheer Experience!

What’s Good: The danger is real! Along with your attention, many scenes hold your guts and choke them properly while you still think what’s next, the background score to this flick is as thick as thieves!

What’s Bad: Minus the entertainment factor, there are things that just don’t make sense! The screenplay has some serious loopholes but if you’re not a technicality geek – you should come out of the film with a thrilling smile

Loo Break: Once you’re in you just can’t ‘escape’ the ‘room’

Watch or Not?: Table No. 21, Luck, Game Night, The Hunger Games, The Divergent Series, Saw (minus the horrific slashing) – if you’ve seen any of them and liked it, just rush for this one!

User Rating:

As the title suggests, the story starts by bringing in Six contrasting people from different backgrounds in a room (No points for guessing what the room is called). So Zoey Davis (Taylor Russell), Ben Miller (Logan Miller), Amanda Harper (Deborah Ann Woll), Mike Nolan (Tyler Labine), Jason Walker (Jay Ellis) and Danny Khan (Nik Dodani) reach the escape room to win the cash prize of 10,000 USD.

Without any unnecessary buildup of knowing each other, all six of them are thrown directly into the game. Within the first round, they all get a reality check of how this is more than just being a game. Clearing multiple rooms one after another, they all are introduced to the brutal twists of the game. Will they survive the impossible tasks or this maze of murder will swallow them? This is what the basic story is all about.

Escape Room Movie Review: Script Analysis

Bragi F. Schut’s story is intriguing from the first frame. It just keeps you hooked even though many things get predictable. The dry humour amidst all the chills actually works in favour of the film. One of the characters, in a scene, questions “Who thinks this kind of shit?” & I am like “exactly bro!” At times the story goes crazily wild or wildly crazy.

We’ve seen this stuff on the similar lines in many movies before, but there are sequences that come as a shock and a surprise. Using the heat, cold (there’s a cold-hearted sarcastic joke in this scene too on which I almost did spit out my Cola), an upside bar, a creepy hospital room with an electrocardiogram machine and a trippy storage space – the makers have made sure to not follow anything typical and fill the thirst of savagery.

Escape Room Movie Review: Star Performance

After getting lost in space, Taylor Russell as Zoey manages well to get through the hurdles in Escape room. She’s the dark horse of the team and underplays herself very well. Logan Miller as Ben clutched to his character maintaining the mystery around him. A very interestingly written character, Logan justifies with his talent. The super stealthy Deborah Ann Woll gets to do a lot of physical stuff as Amanda. Former military personnel served in Iraq, Deborah convincingly does the stunts and manages to look Beautiful at the same time.

Tyler Labine as Mike brings in the comic relief but sadly he’s way underutilized. He’s good in some scenes and bland in others. The mean man Jay Ellis lives up to the promise of being Jason Walker. He’s your anti-hero talking sense at times but provoking you to tear out his guts in some scenes. Nik Dodani plays the role of Danny – a mandatory Asian required to fill the religious diversity. He’s wasted!

Escape Room Movie Review: Direction, Music

Adam Robitel! The same guy who helmed a substandard Insidious’ last year has just levelled up his skills with this one. Yes, he brings his old-school tricks from the horror movies he has been part of and amalgamates them beautifully with the thrills. There’s a sense of mystery, the question of “is all this real or not?” building till the end. The back tracks of the characters could’ve been way better and that’s where the writing falls short.

Hollywood’s go-to-guy for the electronic fusion music, Brian Tyler is back after a refreshing lap in Crazy Rich Asians. The background score scores all the brownie points lost by the director and story-writer. It’s just blended with each scene and not to-your-face loud.

Escape Room Movie Review: The Last Word

All said and done, to experience the breathlessness of Escape Room you’ve to watch this on a big screen. Even if you’ve seen similar movies before, this will have a lot of surprises in store for you. It’ll hold your breath and make you forget how you aren’t breathing for a long time – along with keeping you interested in it.

Three and a half stars!