Escape Room (2019) - Lazy - 5/10 (10/01/19)

Escape rooms have become quite popular over the past few years and it's surprising that a movie about this intriguing concept has only been released this year when this trend is already slowly declining. This film would have been much more successful if it had been released three to five years ago. The concept of the movie is really simple: six strangers get an invitation to an Escape Room game but the challenges quickly turn out being deadly. They must figure out why they have been chosen, try to cooperate as much as they can and survive the trials and tribulations.

This movie has exactly one positive element which is though so important that it makes the film bearable on its own: the different rooms are challenging, diversified and intriguing. They include the settings of a frozen lake, an old bar and a twisted laboratory among others. The riddles are diversified and vary from puzzles over music to literature. The fact that parts of these rooms are connected to traumatic events of the past for the characters adds some thrills at the right moments.

Everything else about this movie is a catastrophe. Let's analyze it chronologically. The first scene is actually one of the last scenes of the film, revealing who is believed to be the lone survivior, which takes away from the tension the movie could have built up to that point. Up next, we are only introduced to three of the six characters and this already reveals the order in which the characters are going to die. The conclusion is a shameless copy of the Cube franchise. The final scene offers a ridiculous open ending that makes no sense at all but leaves the possibility for a sequel if this movie performs well. As we all know, sequels are often even worse than the original film and since this movie is already quite bad, one doesn't want to imagine how terrible another one could be.

Here's my proposal for you: Experience a real Escape Room challenge with some friends. It will be more interactive, peak your curiosity and help you learn more about your friends and yourself. Don't watch this exchangeable movie with its average actors and lazy plot that you will forget about as soon as it's over. This movie stupidly tries to exploit a contemporary phenomenon for its own economic purposes but it fails at so many levels that one almost feels insulted watching parts of it.