Escape Room: The one game you don't want to play
The beginning of a New Year offers multiple opportunities. Each one different from one another. Luckily, for us, this also means the film industry. One of the first movies to be released in 2019 was Escape Room. Sure, most of us are familiar with the idea of an Escape Room, whether it be from an app or a birthday party. The very point of theatre is to be dramatic so one can safely assume that this movie is nothing like the game you’ve played before.
This story starts with six strangers, somehow finding themselves in a competition for $10,000 after being sent some strange black puzzle box. However, things turn around for them after they realize the safely assumed game is real and a threat to their lives. Most of us know the feeling of going to a movie where the movie doesn’t live up to its trailer, but surprisingly the movie was actually thrilling. It was possible that I felt that the movie was good because I felt a special hatred for one of the rooms.
It turns out that each of the rooms represents some horrible accident that happened in their past and when they’re reminded of that moment in their past they have a small, not very descriptive flashback. I believe that because the flashbacks didn’t really have enough detail to add to the depth of the characters, so their emotions seemed somewhat shallow. However, understand that the main focus movie was all on the suspense on solving the riddle and which room would claim its next victim that adding character depth at that point almost seemed superficial.
The suspense was by far the best feature of the film. But was it really worth being called a horror film? Not really. Luckily enough, the ending wasn't as predictable as it could have been. Not just that, it made you think a lot. It was somewhat similar to the horror series Saw, but much more watered-down version of it. If anything there was one scene in the beginning (or end) that was probably the only part that made you cringe in disgust.
Overall if you're looking if you're looking for a thriller to cure yourself of temporary boredom, this is a movie I would watch. However, if you're looking for a true horror movie I would save your ten bucks.
