In the late 90s, a Canadian film called Cube started the "escape room" genre. The Saw movies followed in its footsteps. Then, in 2017, a film called 'Escape room' was released to mixed reviews worldwide. It's a shame because it was actually quite good. It inspired a sequel in 2021 and a mockbuster in 2020.
Escape: Puzzle of fear is a woebegotten cinematic car crash of a film. It's like a bus full of movie industry professionals got into a horrific accident, and some unskilled intern was left to stich the remains together. The resulting abomination then made the movie single handed. In one take. While on crack.
I try not to spoil movies in these reviews. Please don't consider the following review to be spoiler laden, you can only spoil things that are good. This isn't a review, it isn't even a post mortem. (You don't need a doctor to tell you the corpse with it's heart ripped out didn't die of the Ecchymosis on its hallux.) This is a wake.
We join a massive jerk Matthew Blake, he is a controlling abuser who works as some kind of big deal agent. Matthew is a terrible person. He abuses his partner and bullies others. Spoiler alert: he caused a young girl's death and made another person go to an institution. Matthew and his friend (and partner in the awful crimes alluded to above) decide to go to an escape room on a double date, pretty much things go downhill from there; the escape room soon proves to be weaved with details of his real life crime, and SURPRISE! Mathews girlfriend is the survivor from the murder he committed.
I will say that the production company pulled a bit of a shell game by calling themselves 'Thriller films', because if you try and google them you get dozen of pages about genuinely good movies. It's like some two bit convenance store calling themselves 'Best food and wine' when all they sell is off brand junk, out of date Doritos and wine that is best employed as drain cleaner.
The movie lurches drunkenly from one scene to another with no regard for narrative logic or the viewers comfort, the film has more gratuitous flash backs than an episode of Lost and the big twist is signposted more clearly than your average motorway.
It doesn't help that three of the four principle characters are as likeable as a stinging nettle in the urethra, there is the aforementioned, child murdering coercive controller; his wing man who may as well have presented his balls to him in a ring box and his girlfriend who used to date the douche and still craves that creepy meat puppet
Your never under the impression that Blake is anything but a complete scum bag and because of the sloppy editing and lack of craft on display you end up not caring when the 'big reveal' happens and it turns out that he and Omar Gooding's character (Tyler) were responsible for the death of Brittney's (Aubrey Reynolds) little sister who has plotted this whole thing with her loony bin friends.
Tl:dr: Noooooooo! Don't do it! You'll never get that time or those brain cells back.
Escape: Puzzle of fear is a woebegotten cinematic car crash of a film. It's like a bus full of movie industry professionals got into a horrific accident, and some unskilled intern was left to stich the remains together. The resulting abomination then made the movie single handed. In one take. While on crack.
I try not to spoil movies in these reviews. Please don't consider the following review to be spoiler laden, you can only spoil things that are good. This isn't a review, it isn't even a post mortem. (You don't need a doctor to tell you the corpse with it's heart ripped out didn't die of the Ecchymosis on its hallux.) This is a wake.
We join a massive jerk Matthew Blake, he is a controlling abuser who works as some kind of big deal agent. Matthew is a terrible person. He abuses his partner and bullies others. Spoiler alert: he caused a young girl's death and made another person go to an institution. Matthew and his friend (and partner in the awful crimes alluded to above) decide to go to an escape room on a double date, pretty much things go downhill from there; the escape room soon proves to be weaved with details of his real life crime, and SURPRISE! Mathews girlfriend is the survivor from the murder he committed.
I will say that the production company pulled a bit of a shell game by calling themselves 'Thriller films', because if you try and google them you get dozen of pages about genuinely good movies. It's like some two bit convenance store calling themselves 'Best food and wine' when all they sell is off brand junk, out of date Doritos and wine that is best employed as drain cleaner.
The movie lurches drunkenly from one scene to another with no regard for narrative logic or the viewers comfort, the film has more gratuitous flash backs than an episode of Lost and the big twist is signposted more clearly than your average motorway.
It doesn't help that three of the four principle characters are as likeable as a stinging nettle in the urethra, there is the aforementioned, child murdering coercive controller; his wing man who may as well have presented his balls to him in a ring box and his girlfriend who used to date the douche and still craves that creepy meat puppet
Your never under the impression that Blake is anything but a complete scum bag and because of the sloppy editing and lack of craft on display you end up not caring when the 'big reveal' happens and it turns out that he and Omar Gooding's character (Tyler) were responsible for the death of Brittney's (Aubrey Reynolds) little sister who has plotted this whole thing with her loony bin friends.
Tl:dr: Noooooooo! Don't do it! You'll never get that time or those brain cells back.