3 out of 5

Directed by: Adam Robitel

The “I bet you’re wondering how I wound up here…” meme / trope can be an effective way to kick off a movie, or show, but it definitely has some variations that work better than others. It effectively functions as a flash-forward, and the hook – presumably – is to make your audience want to know exactly what’s being “bet” on: What led us to this point? That is: what you’re seeing should be outlandish or unimaginable to some degree, such that the following X minutes are an exciting journey back to that point.

Horror movies can use this in exactly that fashion, and don’t necessarily have to be flash forwards so much as previews of dangers to come, but the concept is the same – let’s get back to this point.

Escape Room kicks off with one such sequence, dropping a character into one of the titular (and at the time of the film’s release, very zeitgeisty) rooms – which, if you’re reading this at some point where they’ve fallen out of common knowledge, are full scale puzzle rooms, where you and perhaps some friends are given a time limit to discover clues scattered about a locked room, leading to the key to the lock – and show off the flick’s horrorful squiggle: that these escape rooms are deadly. Of course, this really isn’t necessary in Escape Room, as trailers were very plain about this, and unless you’re headed into the movie 100% blind, even just knowing its genre is likely enough to clue you in to where it may lead, but hey, still, it’s a game these movies like to play to amp you up right away.

However, one such “I bet you’re wondering…” variation that doesn’t work is when it essentially undermines the stakes of your movie, by guaranteeing that X character will survive until at least that scene. So once we flashback and see that the opening character, Ben (Logan Miller), is one of a handful of seemingly unrelated folks given mysterious invitations to a mysterious, win-a-cash-prize escape room, it’s an instant confirmation that despite Ben being the flunky of the group, he’s going to survive. But going even further, since I’ve already mentioned we have a group of people, and we only see Ben in that opening, well, we know even more info about this survival horror flick before its even begun, don’t we?

This is the gamble writers Bragi F. Schut and Maria Melnik and director Adam Robitel take throughout the movie, essentially shrugging their shoulders at things like tension (or believability) (or characters) (or story) and moving forward with bravado. But you know what…? It also mostly works.

The plot is as described above. Strangers of different backgrounds are brought to an escape room, and soon discover that the promised prize comes with a real threat of death in each room, as it’s a sequence of several from which to escape. As you’d perhaps guess, teamwork turns to desperation at some point, and we have to whittle things down back to Ben. There are cameras monitoring the action in each room, and clearly funding behind the setup, so shouts of Why Are You Doing This? are posited as where this all is leading, and in-line with the gamble mentioned… 99.9% of you will be able to guess the Why without much thought. It’s lazy. It’s tired. And we just barrel right on through it like everything else, on the way to setting up a sequel.

Criticisms of the movie not leaning into its setup are valid, but why this ultimately works is because Escape Room does lean into it when its necessary. We pretty much get more elaborate traps surrounding plot beats, and the balance is about right, giving focus to the traps (which are very impressively designed and presented on a small $9 mil budget) and letting the actors character the plot beats without too much fuss. All of the leads similarly find the right balance between 1- and 3-dimensions, using the spoken-aloud backgrounds (e.g. I was in a war and have PTSD) to inform behaviors / mannerisms just enough to humanize their roles, but not so much that we really need to dig in and care. Brian Tyler and John Carey wander a middle ground between familiarly aggressive themes and completely unnoticeable background with their score; Marc Spicer’s cinematography is dialed up just slightly on colors and lights so that we’re super-real but not edgy; and Steven Mirkovich probably overedits a bit – it’s a bit intense on zooms – but I’m guessing there was some magic done here to disguise the budget, so kudos overall.

Net, as you’re watching, you’re aware the movie is rather ticky-tacky and silly, but the filmmakers and actors seem wholly aware as well. With everyone in on the game, you can enjoy yourself while rolling your eyes at its flaws.