Escape Room

The popularity of escape rooms—amusement venues where players have to decipher clues to leave—spawned this puzzle movie from director Adam Robitel, in which six strangers are lured into a ridiculously elaborate game by promises of big cash prizes. The game, of course, turns deadly, and actually consists of a series of rooms: the first, a lounge, turns into a fiery conflagration, which leads to a rustic cabin surrounded by an icy forest, and then becomes an upside-down honky-tonk. Next stop is a hospital ward, leading to an encounter with an EKG machine that somehow takes the survivors to a surrealistic TV room and finally to a sumptuous library that threatens to implode. Each change requires figuring out some riddle—by preposterously accidental means—and as the players proceed from place to place some will die, until apparently only one is left. A few of the participants, such as shy college student Zoey (Taylor Russell), are sympathetic, while others, like arrogant broker Jason (Jay Ellis), are not, so those who are doomed to perish are telegraphed fairly quickly. There are echoes of sources as varied as Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and the Saw franchise here, with a rote explanation for what the characters have in common, as well as a closing revelation of powerful forces at work that suggests the filmmakers intended this as the first chapter in a franchise. An extravagant but absurd would-be thriller, this is not a necessary purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include deleted scenes with an alternate ending (19 min.), and the behind-the-scenes featurettes “Game, Sets, Match” (5 min.), “The Lone Survivors” (4 min.), and “Will You Ever?” (2 min.). Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are bonus DVD and digital copies of the film. Bottom line: a decent extras package for an unremarkable horror thriller.] (F. Swietek)