Deborah Ann Woll

(On Cable TV, August 2019) At first glance, Escape Room looks like one of those instantly disposable horror movies that have been part of the cinema landscape for a few decades—based on a fad, shot with a small budget in enclosed locations with a handful of actors, and ready to populate the multiplexes until the next such movie a few weeks later. A viewing will confirm this suspicion, albeit with an important caveat—Escape Room is fun to watch more often than not, and works reasonably well until its somewhat disappointing ending. You can certainly see similarities between Escape Room and such other notable titles as Saw and Cube—strangers trapped in an enclosed location, trying to decode the twisted logic that will free them. This being a horror movie, the titular escape rooms are fatal and specifically aimed at their victims—we know how close we are to the ending by the number of participants that remain. Some slick cinematography, capable direction from Adam Robitel, decent actors, restrained gore and a script that manages to succeed during its first two acts all help make Escape Room a serviceable horror movie—and if that sounds like faint praise, then you haven’t seen the depths to which many contemporary horror movies sink to. Escape Room isn’t without its problems, but it’s distinctive enough to be interesting, well-handled-enough to keep our interest, and features likable performers. Taylor Russell is quite likable as the obviously designated final girl, while Jay Ellis delivers a solid performance as an untrustworthy participant. Tyler Labine has a small but striking role, while Deborah Ann Woll makes the most of a sketched-in character. The script has its ups and down: on the positive side, it imagines some ingenious and terrifying escape rooms, and does manage to suggest quite a bit of background to the characters without underlining every single element of it. Less fortunately, it doesn’t quite manage a satisfactory ending: The “fatal game that rich people bet on” shtick is getting old (Unfriended: Dark Web didn’t get there first, but it’s only one of many other recent horror movies using the same plot point), and the way it’s handled smacks more of premature franchise announcement than a way to wrap up this film effectively. Still, I enjoyed Escape Room quite a bit more than I thought even with its various issues—Since a sequel seems inevitable, then let’s welcome it and see what it will have to offer.