Adventure and escape rooms are very popular with many puzzle fans. There has been a real boom of such installations in many cities in recent years. In Whatthefilm.ch’s hometown of Bern alone, six of these rooms were opened within a very short time. Normally you are in a good mood puzzling with your friends for a while, you get help from the friendly staff and you can really enjoy the experience. Netflix shows us that there is another way with the recently released psychological horror film Escape Room from 2019. But has the adaptation of the worldwide phenomenon succeeded?
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That plays in Escape Room from
Six people each receive a strange puzzle cube with a creative invitation. This turns out to be the bearer of a ticket to the mysterious Escape Room of the company Minos. In addition to exciting puzzles, the winner also wins $ 10,000. Zoey, Amanda, Jason, Danny, Mike and Ben – who couldn’t be more different – roll into the waiting room of the Minos building and get to know each other a bit. No one can explain why he or she of all people received this invitation. Only Danny turns out to be a nerd and has already played through countless of these rooms. But before the group knows it, the game starts.
However, the participants imagined the battle for $ 10,000 a little differently. Because already the first room turns out to be a gigantic oven that threatens to grill the Knobler. In addition to puzzles, the next rooms are also equipped with deadly traps and stimulate the individual participants to reflect: In at least one room everyone is confronted with a bad experience from their past. A short time later, the group realizes the playmakers’ true goal and the reason why they were chosen. Can you escape the escape room unscathed?
Good stuff for a horror movie
With Escape Room the makers landed a real coup. The film is pretty entertaining at around 100 minutes, although it has to get going a bit at the beginning. The idea of incorporating the current trend of puzzle rooms into a psychological horror film and providing it with a solid story is creative and was well received by the audience. With a budget of $ 9 million, the Adam Robitel-realized film grossed over $ 155 million. A sequel is already in planning and should be in theaters in 2022. This will probably take up the events from the first part and follow up seamlessly. That at least conveys the end of Escape Room.
The film is also fun because of the great equipment. Every room in the Escape Room has been lovingly staged in detail. So the set designers oriented themselves to the presentation of the right rooms in order to let the audience cheer and give them the feeling of being in a real game. That gives the film that certain something. The camera work is correspondingly impressive. Especially in a room where the interior is completely upside down, it flies around and perfectly conveys the desperation and the struggle for the survival of the team. When I looked at the strip on the big screen, in retrospect I regretted not having viewed it with 4DX technology. The moving cinema seats and the temperature effects would have rounded off the cinema experience perfectly.
In terms of acting, the actors deliver a credible performance. Personally, I remember Taylor Russell best as Zoey. Your figure is super intelligent and is underestimated by the participants at first, but later undergoes an enormous change. The same goes for Ben, played by Logan Miller. The roles are not exactly cast with famous A-Stars, but that doesn’t harm the film. So the focus remains on the puzzle rooms and the gruesome action that happens in them. The premise underlying the strip is also terrifying. This concerns above all the truth about the escape room and thus the activities of the fictional company Minos. The little plot twist at the end of the film makes that clear.
A strip for puzzle fans
Escape Room entertains and offers space for puzzling along – which enhances the film. As a fan of Adventure Rooms, I was immediately thrilled when the film hit theaters in 2019. I watched it with friends who are not averse to puzzling, of course, and we were thrilled. So I recommend it to everyone who is a fan of these games and of course horror films. Sometimes he even made me feel a little bit like that SawSeries, but the flick isn’t quite as bloodthirsty as the films with the cruel traps. Escape Room is now available on Netflix.
Do you feel like watching more horror films? We have listed 13 strips for you here.
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