Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Jay Ellis, Tyler Labine, Nik Dodani, Deborah Ann Woll, Yorick van Wageningen, Cornelius Geaney Jr, Russell Crous, Bart Fouche, Jessica Sutton, Paul Hampshire, Vere Tinsdale, Kenneth Fok, Caely-Jo Levy, Jaime-Lee Boado, Inge Beckmann.

If it all seems a little familiar, then perhaps you have played the game before, it wouldn’t be surprising, after all for Escape Room you could read 1997’s The Cube, you could even lean into many of the elements of what made the initial Saw series the phenomenon it became, as the song goes, there is nothing new under the sun. Yet for those who walk through the cinema halls in the hope to feel the pressure of Escape Room it surely must feel as if groundhog day has instead arisen, the plot may be different, but the idea remains resolutely the same, and it is one that suffers because of it.

A group of strangers are placed in a situation in which they have to work together to survive, the hurdle placed before them staggering, or perhaps it is as unnerving as watching an episode of The Crystal Maze unfold before your eyes, just without the creativity and humour of Richard O’ Brien adding colour and flair to the proceedings. It may be a cruel addition to add, but it would have arguably made the film more entertaining, more passionate.

The problem being, unlike The Cube, which at the time was innovative and had its only sense of self-effacing charm, and the Saw franchise, which has its unlikely deeply satisfying level of threat in which you can imagine happening, Escape Room relies too much on the idea of a craze for logic problems set in a manufactured premise, place in a group of single survivors from previous accidents, fate having intervened to the point where they are carrying all the scars of their battle with death, and place the notion in the cinema goer’s mind that all such accidents are for the whim of a genius mind and ready-made audience, and you have the hallmarks of conspiracy. It just doesn’t sit, the threat isn’t enough, you find yourself lacking the compassion for those involved, and all because it involves the promise of finical reward.

It is in this act that humanity is shown to rely on greed to think and too survive, and because of this Escape Room falls down upon itself and leaves a dusty crater that is insignificant and unremarkable.

A film in which the only escape would be to stand up and leave the screening, a tragic waste of what could have been a good addition to the genre.

Ian D. Hall