Movie review: ‘Escape Room’ delivers a predictable thrill

Paradise Thomas
Wed, 30 Jan 2019 01:35:03 +0000
Arts & Life, Movies, News, acting, Adam Robitel, escape room, escape rooms, game, immersive, innocent, Jay ellis, movie, movie review, play, room, screenplay, survive, suspense, Taylor russell, thrill

Actress Deborah Ann Wol stars as Amanda Harper in the 2019 film “Escape Room.” Credit: Courtesy of TNS

The thriller movie “Escape Room” is about a group of people chosen to go through an immersive escape room game experience. The movie is an original screenplay written by Bragi F. Schut and Maria Melnik directed by Adam Robitel.

The film focuses on a group of extremely different people with one thing in common: They are all invited to play one of the highest-rated escape rooms for the chance to win $10,000. They soon find out it’s not an innocent game, and the movie follows the group as they try to survive the deadly escape room.

The acting in this movie is pretty good. There are not any incredible scenes that stuck out, but Taylor Russell who plays socially awkward, smart girl Zoey Davis, was well cast.

One of her best scenes in particular was during a suspenseful part in the movie when she tries to convince a member of the group to not give up.

Another actor worth mentioning is Jay Ellis, who plays Jason Walker, the corporate “jerk” character. He was definitely the one the audience was hoping to see fail. From his facial expressions to the cadence and tone of his condescending remarks, he is truly one of the most infuriating characters in the movie, but in a good way.

The movie’s plot was pretty interesting, but it has several aspects of the “Saw” movie franchise. It was off-putting how “Saw-esque” it was. The movie started off exciting and thrilling, but toward the middle it became predictable, which took away the suspense and thrill, making the subpar acting from a majority of the characters very evident.

This made certain scenes that were supposed to be suspenseful and gripping awkward and laughable.

The conclusion to the plot also gives no satisfaction to the viewers; it was very rushed. There was endless action and it ended abruptly in an unsatisfying way. The writing felt lazy and ?seemed that it was meant to set up a sequel.

Overall, the movie was a decent suspense film; not great, but not horrible. Although the plot had several holes, the concept was pretty good. If the film had better writing and acting, it could have been amazing.

Rating: 3/5