Remember Cube? That was a good movie. A bunch of Canadian day players getting slaughtered in a succession of booby-trapped, discreet spaces within one larger room. Good times. Anyway, Escape Room is essentially Cube dressed up in the finery of a current, zeitgeisty trend for team-building exercises in confined spaces. Looks neat!
Cube isn’t the only cinematic forebearer this first trailer for Escape Room brings to mind. There’s also something of David Fincher’s The Game in how the titular experience is sold to its participants as a way of escaping the drudgery of their everyday lives, the Saw franchise in some everyday folk trying to escape from a murderous trap, and shades of Stuart Hazeldine’s Exam in the bringing together of individuals for a fiendish game where they will (presumably) be enticed to screw each other over for a cash prize.
Then things take a turn for the uncanny as the cast escape their first room, only to find themselves in a succession of…well, different spaces which will probably be explained during an unsatisfying third-act exposition dump which may also include a Saw-like “this is why these people were chosen” twist, but the bit where they’re all upside down was a cool visual, huh?
Directed by Insidious: The Last Key‘s Adam Robitel, Escape Room was filmed under the name The Maze before some genius executive noticed this whole escape room gimmick might be a good bandwagon to hop onto. It stars Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, True Blood and Daredevil’s Deborah Ann Woll, Jay Ellis, and Tyler Labine from Reaper. Remember Reaper? That was a good show.
Escape Room is due for release on January 4 2019.
