Escape Room Tournament Of Champions: Review by @Kush_Hayes
2019s Escape Room is an unappreciated little gem that even SONY doesnt really seem to respect despite the fact they took the minor hit their Columbia Pictures brand created and then got mad at it for existing.
Kush, what does that mean?
It means that a bunch of suits realized they had a possible franchise on their hands and then thought Their notes were the ones that saved the property and that They could do better. And then they found out making movies is hard. And probably didnt like it. And probably want this to just go away.
Jesus, Kush, did you not like the movie?
Actually its just as enjoyable as the first film, if not just a little bit less. That third act is kind of annoying, especially with its telenovela formula twist.
We meet up with our two survivors from the first film, Zoey and Ben, reprised by both Taylor Davis and Logan Miller. And while its unknown how much time has passed since the first movie, Zoey is in therapy trying to deal with the trauma inflicted by those events. This is after a short montage of recapping the events of the previous movie, which is interesting, but resembles too much of a television formula to where I wonder why we didnt get a voice over instructing “Previously on Escape Room:”.
Zoey and Brad are still haunted from the previous game and with Zoey being the driving force for uncovering what the evil “Minos group” is doing, Brad reluctantly follows her. The two, through extensive Cracker Jack and “Popsicle” Stick training think theyve found the headquarters of the evil “Minos group” in New York City. And while Brad is kind of a sucker, he is right that they should survale the block, at least drive around the block. But Zoey is gonna Zoey and immediately goes in to where she is robbed by a hobo and unbeknownst to them, the game has started.
We meet four other souls aboard The Q train and my biggest complaint of the film is making the forced throw away line “What is this, a Tournament of Champions?” exposed to the audience. I have to go back but I think they have a different character in the trailer say it as well.
This films evolution is rushed because, well, we have to get to the puzzles, because thats what everyone is here to see. And the puzzles for the most part as still as fun and clever as the first film. My second gripe is the third act when our group temporarily separated only to be slightly reunited...only to be MORE reunited. Someone flubbed hard in the third act.
In my review of the previous film I neglected to focus on the main cast and its director. Since theyre all back for the sequel, they continue to show that they were the best one for this job. Director Adam Robitel, continues to do a great job bringing the weight of the drama into the movies puzzles. Lots of fun setpieces that had this reviewer wondering how our favorites were going to get out of this debacle.
Taylor Russell feels like she is still maturing as an actor, but consistently improving to the point, that Id would like to go back and see her in Netflixs Lost in Space reboot. Any problems I have with her are in the writing. Her character is consistently naive when the story calls for it and not nearly paranoid enough from what she has seen this evil group already do the first time. Her character should have major trust issues with everyone leading into this film.
Logan Miller, he is not given enough to do in this to even make us remember that his character was not only a survivor of the last film, but technically its winner. When he isnt telling the rest of the games participants to trust Zoey, hes only questioning her reasoning. He has a great scene where he experiences a PTSD induced nightmare, but isnt given much more time to evolve out of that.
If youre going to call something “Tournament of Champions” itd have been great if we had other movies of the supporting characters in this film. Id like to see the Escape Room of Social Media Influencers. Or the Escape Room of religious leaders. Or the Escape Room of people with that rare condition who cant feel pain. For the same low-low budget of the first film, you pop a few of those out and hope Taylor Russell can come back in five to six years - along with the rest of the survivors, NOW its a Tournament of Champions and thus an event. Even if its was an accident, this is what Fast and Furious showed us.
Escape Room was never an original idea, but it could allow young directors and writers to experiment with weird pg13 sci-fi shit. While I dont have the numbers for the budget of this edition, it isnt unreasonable to say its same $9 million dollars that earned its global box office of $155 million wont do as well if not better. Hell, even at the same budget, if i brought in 20 million less, its still a massive profit. Sony did as little as it could for the promotion of this project. I understand most of the major people didnt get a screener of this, which is weird as when it was a Columbia Pictures Project, they wanted people to get the word out there.
Mentioning the PG13 rating earlier, theres such little blood and carnage in this horror film, I would confidently say your insecure ten year old could sit through this and be entertained.
Again, this is technically a SONY project and while this was one of the better “horror” films they put out in 2019, in 2021, theyre being pretty reserved about it.
Three out of Five Blueberries
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