Escape Room (as always, not to be confused with Escape Room) was a neat horror film that may have been very silly, but it was also very enjoyable, and featured some superb set design. It takes me back to the heady pre-pandemic days of going to the cinema, and due to that pandemic I missed out on seeing the sequel, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, when it hit the cinemas. Well, it's now came to Netflix and currently sits at the No.1 position in the UK top ten at time of writing. I had heard it was a poor sequel, but had to check it out anyway. I'm glad I did as while this is again really silly, it was again really enjoyable, so much so that I was surprised when it ended at just how quickly it seemed to flow by. Spoilers for the first film to follow.
Having survived a twisted escape room experience in which rich people placed bets on who would survive the deadly rooms, Zoey (Taylor Russell - Escape Room) and Ben (Logan Miller - Escape Room) decide they must expose the evil company responsible. They head to New York where they think they have located the HQ of the Minos company, but instead find a derelict building. A series of events leads to the two ending up on a subway train, along with four other passengers, and before they can do anything about it, they discover the train is actually the start of a new escape room. Quickly discovering the other passengers are also survivors of Minos escape rooms, they see the only option to try and work together and once again 'win' the game, but like before, each room they come across is more deadly than the last.
Apparently the home release of the movie had an extended cut which drastically altered parts of the film. I have only seen the theatrical cut and so obviously my review will be based on that. I felt some trepidation coming into this as I was not sure how the two protagonists would manage to fall into another experience. It sub(way)verted my expectations as there were a few false moments before the story begins proper, including a fun nightmare sequence, and various moments that had be questioning what was really going on. The story is silly of course, and one of my very early predictions ended up being true, but there were also some genuinely surprising moments. What I really liked about this sequel is that it goes to some lengths to recap what happened previously, so much so that I didn't really need to have read the Wikipedia synopsis, as the events of that first film are shown in a relatively lengthy prologue
The six main characters were interesting enough, including a priest (Thomas Cocquerel), a former travel vlogger (Indya Moore), and a woman with a condition that means she is unable to feel pain (Holland Roden - Teen Wolf TV series) among the characters. I liked that these were all likeable people, and it was nice how they began to work together as a team almost immediately. Their different accounts of the various escape rooms they had escaped from were entertaining.
The main hook is of course the escape rooms themselves, and I'm pleased to say they were just as impressively designed as before. Over the five or so rooms they encounter all sorts of new dangers, from acid rain, to electricity, quicksand, floods and lasers, all in wonderfully designed rooms. These include some like the first movie that appear initially to be outdoors, before it's revealed to be a trick. I would say one minor complaint is how obscure the puzzles often felt, with me often losing track of just how the characters were figuring things out. There is lots of Crystal Maze style situations of characters shouting hurriedly at each other about what they need to do. Maybe I was misremembering, but the death scenes this time around felt a bit tame, with more than few characters death scenes happening away from the focus of the camera. The plot was dumb but fun, and leads to a predictably bonkers ending that I hope results in a third film.
Having heard Escape Room: Tournament of Champions was a shadow of the first film, I was most happy to discover I enjoyed this one just as much. The set dressing was fantastic here, with the film having such a cool design to it. It is testament to how much I was loving this that I was genuinely surprised when I found out the movie was near its end, the ninety minutes was over in a flash. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions can currently be streamed on Netflix.
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