A group of strangers, who (on the surface) all appear to have nothing in common, are locked in a game (monitored by some unknown source) that winds up having deadly consequences. As they make it (well, most of them) from puzzle to puzzle, you begin to suspect that these people that were chosen to solve them might NOT be so random. Each puzzle is meant to expose and mock some deep dark secret of their personal lives... and then, if they don't solve them in a timely (and correct) manner, people start to die.
No, this is not a movie review for the latest in the "Saw" movie franchise. Instead, this is the basic plot for the new movie "Escape Room." It doesn't really have any "celebrity" stars, just a few people who you stop and think to yourself "hey, I've seen them in _____." One of the girls played a teenage vampire in the HBO show "True Blood," while one of the guys recently played a Canadian Mountie in "Super Troopers 2." Other than that... nothing. Which is ok, you don't necessarily need A-list stars to make a good movie. Sometimes, it actually makes it better. So you have a movie that is riding the wave of popularity for these new "escape rooms" that seem to be popping up everywhere. I've never really had a desire to PAY someone to lock me in a room and see if I'm smart enough to escape...
The movie begins with a young male trying to escape from a room that looks like some sort of library. He falls in through the roof and immediately begins looking for clues to help him escape, as the walls begin to close in on him. Does he escape? Does he survive? I guess we'll find out. The scene ends and it cuts to something like "three days earlier." The story follows three individuals: a young college-aged girl named Zoey (played by Taylor Russell, she played Judy in the recent "Lost in Space" Netflix series), an eager young stockbroker named Jason (played by Jay Ellis, he's apparently had a lot of small TV roles) and a downtrodden grocery store employee named Ben (played by Logan Miller, who actually played the character Ben on "The Walking Dead" as well... I knew I knew him from somewhere) and picks up their lives as they are each given this mysterious box that points them to play this escape room for a chance to win big bucks.
Apparently, they all decided to play the game, as the next scene is them all showing up to this big building and checking in to the lobby before the game starts. They meet up with four other characters (who apparently had less important stories... so you just KNOW that they are going to die) and they soon find out that the lobby isn't actually a lobby. It's the first in the series of rooms that they have to escape if they want to survive.
Although the movie is incredibly close to the plot of the Saw movies, I'd have to say I definitely still enjoyed it. It was as if they took the plot from Saw, but made it a lot less gory... because, there in the end, all those Saw movies became was just "let's find different and more shocking ways to kill people." I was initially bummed, because I thought that they set up the beginning of the movie to where it was REALLY easy to pick out who was going to live or die. They did throw in a nice little twist in there. It was like "HA! You thought you knew what was going to happen!" And.... blam, now we have a setup for a sequel! It will be dubbed "Escape Room 2: An Even Escapier Room."
It wasn't the best... but it definitely wasn't the worst. None of the escape rooms contained battle shrimp... and for that, I'll give it a 7 out of 10.
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