Escape Room: Tournament of Champions review

ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS: 

THIS IS ONE DISAPPOINTING “ROOM”, EVEN MORE SO THAN ITS PREDECESSOR!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** out of 4

COLUMBIA PICTURES

Taylor Russell and Logan Miller in Escape Room: Tournament of Champions

 

            Because everything is getting a sequel nowadays, it’s time to return to the Escape Room in Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, the follow-up to the 2019 film, Escape Room which despite earning mixed reviews was a big hit at the box-office. I did see the first film when it came out back in early 2019 and while I thought the premise for the first movie was ingenious and had a lot of potential as a smart, well-crafted thriller that kept you on your toes, it ultimately ended up being a standard horror-action film with some interesting ideas and mostly decent acting from its cast, but the overall film just wasn’t that exciting or clever with a script that felt more like a mix-between a horror movie and a Hunger Games/Maze Runner young-adult book adaptation for some reason, it wasn’t a terrible movie, just uninteresting and rehashed. 

            Well, because Sony loves to make franchises out of movies that probably don’t need to be a franchise in the first place, now we have Escape Room: Tournament of Champions that tries to be like the Hunger Games: Catching Fire or Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials of Escape Room. While I didn’t like the first film very much, nor was I looking forward to seeing the follow-up, I tried to keep an open mind and hoped that it would improve on its predecessor in certain ways, even if it’s just a little bit…Nah, it’s more of the same!

            Escape Room: Tournament of Champions has a few inventive moments and Taylor Russell (Lost in Space, Waves, Words on Bathroom Walls) and Logan Miller (I’m in the Band, A Dog’s Purpose, Love, Simon) reprising their roles as Zoey and Ben do a decent job as the leads, but this sequel falls victim to various sequel “traps” where the focus is more on how elaborate and chaotic the escape rooms themselves are rather than tell an interesting story with engaging characters, if anything, this “Escape Room” is a downgrade. 

            The film follows Zoey (Russell) and Ben (Miller), who are the only survivors of the escape rooms orchestrated by the shady Minos Corporation and decide to take the fight to the organization themselves. However, when they end up stuck in a subway train car among other survivors of previous escape rooms, Zoey and Ben realize that they are back in the escape room and must solve all the clues and get out before everyone dies. Kidnapping Mr. Heineken

            The film also stars Deborah Ann Woll (True Blood, Ruby Sparks, Daredevil (TV series)) reprising her role from the first film as Amanda, Thomas Cocquerel (Table 19, The Tribes of Palos Verdes, Billionaire Boys Club) as Nathan, Holland Roden (Teen Wolf, Lore, No Escape) as Rachel, Indya Moore (Pose, Queen & Slim, A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting) as Brianna, and Carlito Olivero (East Los High, Bad Samaritan, Step Up: High Water) as Theo. 

            Overall, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is an extremely subpar “Room” that never quite gives the series some fresh blood nor does it take the franchise anywhere new. It has a few exhilarating moments, unfortunately it lacks an interesting plot or likable characters to balance the thrills out. 

            The plot is best described as the Escape Room version of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire minus just about everything that made that movie work. A bunch of the survivors crossing paths for a Tournament of Champions, sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? 

            Not only is it a worse version of its predecessor, but it somehow rehashes the exact same ending as the first film and it’s one of the most abrupt and anticlimactic endings I’ve seen in a long time that clearly exists just to set up Escape Room 3. The rooms themselves are visually appealing and well put together, but you need a good story and compelling characters to go along with the escape rooms because at times, the scenarios go on for too long to the point where they become boring, which should not be the case with a film like this. 

            The acting for the most part is fine, but if the film gave them more screen time to develop their characters, then I think the performances by the cast would have been a lot stronger. 

            If you’re a fan of the first film and just don’t care about quality, then by all means there might be something to enjoy in this film with a drink or two. Everyone else should just stick with A Quiet Place: Part II and some of the other scary movies out now, this one is just a dull, mess, at least the first one tried to tell a coherent story and has a few interesting ideas. 

            Final thoughts, despite the best efforts from its cast, this is a pointless sequel that exists just because the first one was a big hit when it came out. The escape rooms themselves are impressive, but without a coherent story or compelling characters, this “Room” disappoints more often than excites.