Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021) - Horror Film Review

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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Last Ones Out (2015) - Zombie Horror Film Review

You can tell that writer and director Howard Fyvie was heavily inspired by 28 Days Later when coming up with his South African zombie film Last Ones Out. Everything by the fast moving infected 'zombies' to the up close and shaky camera footage during action scenes, even to the protagonist waking up alone in hospital. The only problem with this one however is the distinct lack of infected and some dumb and annoying characters.

A young American man, Henry (Greg Kriek - Maze Runner: The Death Cure) had been in South Africa to keep his fianceé company while she was working in the country. Due to needing to have his appendix removed he was in a rural hospital, and so when a mysterious new virus sweeps the continent and turns those infected into flesh hungry maniacs he finds himself in a bad situation. After the hospital is overrun, Henry is rescued by Sunet (Christia Visser), a nurse and together they team up with a doctor, Siseko (Tshamano Sebe) and a man named Vincent (Vukile Zuma). Henry manages to get in contact with his fianceé, but she tells him the unfolding disaster has made her contemplate her life choices and that she no longer wants to be with him! However, she does offer him (and him only) a place on the convoy that she has arranged to evacuate herself and her team. With the false promise that all four of them will be able to join the convoy, Henry and the others set out into the wilderness of Africa to get to the rendezvous point.

Things don't start off well and that is mainly the path of the whole film. The first biggest problem is Henry, this character is self centered, bossy and downright rude. Being in a strange country, and seeing the outbreak as nothing to do with him he just wants to leave, happy to trick his companions in his selfish desire to save himself. This is all designed I guess to give him a redemptive arc, and that is what is attempted with the character. I couldn't look past his earlier actions though, and where early in the film he had been trying to assert himself as the leader (even right at the start when he was still drugged up and barely able to move he is barking out orders!), this arc gives him the opportunity to become the leader he so desperately wanted to be. It sucks that he was made the central hero when I would say Sunet is much more of that. She is the one who rescued him, she is the one who carries on with the plan even when everything looks dire, yet she is made to play second fiddle to the arrogant Henry.

Tokoloshe: An African Curse (2020) - Horror Film Review

Tokoloshe: An African Curse (also known as Tokoloshe - The Calling) is a South African horror film that was directed and co-written by Richard Green (the second unit assistant director on District 9). I'm going to state right away that having watched this I am none the wiser as to what the actual story was, the way it is laid out is very confusing. From what I could tell it is like if The Shining was trimmed down to a 67 minute run time with some minor changes made.

A writer goes to an empty hotel with his wife and young child in order to work on his latest novel. Unknown to him and his family however is the fact that the hotel has a curse placed on it by the original native owners of the land it sits on. A tokoloshe dwells in the place, this shape shifting evil must kill every ten years in order to keep on living. Meanwhile, or maybe at some point in the future a young lady, Thembi (Shezi Sibongiseni) plagued with dreams of the hotel decides to head there with a psychologist named Dr. Richards in order to save the family there. She once visited the place as a child and feels it calling her back. As the intro blurb states, Dr. Richards went missing whilst investigating the place, and so his fate at least is known.

There were plenty of horror elements here, and if they had been framed in a half cohesive way then this might have been something good. As it was I just couldn't make head or tail of what was going on. The easiest place to start is that this is a The Shining clone. You have the empty hotel in which the father character gets possessed by some type of evil. He regularly talks to the ghosts of the hotel, such as sitting down to drink at the bar with the ghostly bartender. At one point his laptop is seen by his wife, and much like Jack Torrance's typewriter it is full of repeated words, and there are also moments when children are glimpsed standing next to each other in corridors. Oh yes, and the child rides around on a toy that is almost but not quite a tricycle. This wouldn't be bad as a copy if it was paced out better, but it is just a confusing muddle of scenes with different characters. It took effort just to write the plot summary in my second paragraph, I waited the whole movie expecting to get some plot exposition but it never came around.

Escape Room (2019) - Horror Film Review

Escape Room (not to be confused with the two separate 2017 films of the exact same titles and premises) is a horror that jumps on the moderately recent rise of the 'escape room' experience. For the few who don't know it is a team based real life puzzle game where you are locked in a themed room and must solve clues and puzzles hidden around the place to escape. It makes a good idea for a horror, though with the real life deaths in Poland when a group got burnt alive last year maybe not the best timing (turns out the release of this was delayed by a few months out of respect for that tragic event).

Six strangers that include introverted Zoey (Taylor Russell - Lost in Space), waster Ben (Logan Miller - Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse), trucker Mike (Tyler Labine - Tucker & Dale vs Evil), stock broker Jason (Jay Ellis), ex-soldier Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll - Daredevil, The Punisher) and geek Danny (Nik Dodani) receive invitations to go to a new immersive escape room. With a large cash reward should they complete it, all decide to go to the experience which is based in a large office block. Once the game has started though they quickly come to realise that failure in any of the rooms they encounter results in actual death. With no options left the group must work together to try and find a way to escape with their lives...

At some point on the Super Best Friendcast (R.I.P) last year they had a discussion about how awful the Escape Room films were. I wasn't sure which ones they were talking about but I still went in to seeing this with my expectations set low. You know what though? This was a decent horror movie. It is designed for a certain demographic, there is nothing harrowing or terrifying to be found here, but in the style of Final Destination this is designed just to be a pure fun watch. This combines the cruel and random deaths of that series then crossed with with both The Cube and Saw. Each escape room (of which there are a few) is connected to the previous by some sort of secret door and so you know each time they successfully escape there is something likely more horrific for the group around the corner. In my head this is a prequel to The Cube series, though one that features slightly more explanation for what is happening. Saw also felt like an inspiration, people captured and forced to participate in games for one, but also as I got a sense that just maybe these characters had sordid pasts that in a twisted way meant they deserved to be there.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) - Zombie Horror Film Review

I have long awaited Resident Evil: The Final Chapter which as the title implies is the end to the divisive series. I have always liked the films, while they have never been amazing (with the exception of the very first, 2002's Resident Evil) they have constantly been good, even the worst in the series such as Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Resident Evil: Retribution had their fantastic moments. This final film loops around to complete the often disjointed and meandering tale. Spoilers for the previous films are bound to follow.

Humanity's last stand at the White House in Washington DC turned out to be one huge trap set by Wesker (Shawn Roberts) to kill Alice (Milla Jovovich). However several weeks later and she emerges from the ruins of the once proud city, seemingly the only survivor. The Umbrella A.I named The Red Queen contacts Alice and tells her that there is an anti-virus to the zombie plague hidden back in Raccoon City, in the place the outbreak first occured; The Hive. Despite not trusting the devious A.I Alice decides to head back there to find it. However not only does she only have 48 hours to activate it before the last remaining bastions of humanity are wiped out, but she is being hunted by the leader of the Umbrella company; Dr Isaacs (Iain Glen) and his small army of deadly soldiers.