Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
There’s not much room for escape in another Saw rip-off with disposable players.
Dying to play: Thomas Cocquerel
People will pay a lot of money to watch others die. But the novelty of the Minos games was that the victims offered themselves up voluntarily. Until now. Zoe (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller), who escaped the horrors of the last film, now want to put a stop to the sorry business. So, by piecing together the coordinates from a previous puzzle, they head to New York to confront the perpetrators of the games of death.
The chilling aspect of all this is that escape rooms are a real thing, a popular pastime at that. And participants have been known to die in the games, albeit unintentionally. The new film, again directed by Adam Robitel, opens with a statement detailing mankind’s bloodlust, citing the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome. Such activities have now gone underground and the price for watching them skyrocketed. The trick is how to lure new players into an escape room without them knowing it.
And so six strangers with a history of gaming – Zoe and Ben included – find themselves trapped on a subway train with a whole load of traps up its sleeve. Of course, the set-up is less a game than a puzzle, in which a variety of hidden life-saving clues are there for the players to discover – within a time limit. After the carriage has been diverted to a disused track, it is gradually electrified, forcing Zoe, Ben and their new colleagues to scramble for pointers to save their lives. Considering the life-threatening pressure they are under, it’s a wonder they can marshal their collective out-of-the-box thinking. They’d obviously make mincemeat of The Times’ cryptic crossword. More intriguing is the elaborate death traps set by the architects of their worst nightmares in which every floor tile and panel might unleash a fatal surprise.
The sequel adheres to the usual clichés and formulae of such franchise fodder, which makes it hard to care for the fate of the victims on show. But the participants’ game-playing ingenuity and altruistic team work makes the film guiltily watchable up to a point. It’s all too far-fetched to trigger genuine suspense, although the apprehension level is certainly well maintained.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Indya Moore, Holland Roden, Thomas Cocquere, Carlito Olivero, Matt Esof, Lucy Newman-Williams, Scott Coker.
Dir Adam Robitel, Pro Neal H. Moritz, Ex Pro Adam Robitel, Karina Rahardja and Philip Waley, Co-Pro Oren Uziel, Screenplay Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch and Oren Uziel, from a story by Christine Lavaf and Fritz Bohm, Ph Marc Spicer, Pro Des Edward Thomas, Ed Steven Mirkovich and Peter Pav, Music Brian Tyler and John Carey, Costumes Reza Levy, Sound Paul Pirola.
Columbia Pictures/Original Film-Sony Pictures.
88 mins. USA. 2021. Rel: 16 July 2021. Cert. 15.
