Escape Room Tournament of Champions – Bigger, Bolder Sequel
Director: Adam Robitel
Writer: Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel touch, Oren Uziel (Screenplay) Christine Lavaf, Fritz Bohm (Story)
Starring: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Thomas Cocquerel, Holland Roden, Indya Moore, Carlito Olivero
Plot: Six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive. Joining forces with two of the original survivors, they soon discover they’ve all played the game before.
Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Escape Room Tournament of Champions starts as Zoey (Russell) and Ben (Miller) are looking to uncover the truth about Minos the company behind the game they survived, forcing them to travel to New York city for where they believe the main base is.
When the pair find themselves on a subway train, they learn they have been trapped back into the game with Nathan (Cocquerel), Rachel (Roden), Brianna (Moore) and Theo (Olivero) four other winners of the game, where they need to work together to escape another deadly game.
Thoughts on Escape Room Tournament of Champions
Characters & Performances – Zoey is still struggling with her fear of flying after her mother’s death, which has led her down her obsession with exposing the truth about Minos, she has her process when solving the rooms, clearly showing her higher intelligence and her social awkwardness. Taylor Russell continues to be the highlight of this universe, she completely sells us on the idea that she is an innocent victim (which Zoey is) fighting a battle she knows he needs to win, but can’t. Ben is wiling to help Zoey, even if he feels the battles are hopeless, he is still suffering nightmares of the events in the first film. Logan Miller does work well in this role, he is starting to make us forget about what he did in Love Simon, (sometimes a role will make you hate an actor). Nathan, Rachel, Brianna and Theo have all survived previous games, putting them back into the game will give us a fresh set of players that have been through the previous encounters with Minos.
Story – The story here follows six previous winners of Escape Rooms that are thrown back into another game, one which is deadlier than before, one Zoey Davis is trying to collect evidence to expose the mysterious company behind them. This is a story that might well play out like the previous film, with the different rooms to navigate, which are different and deadly like before, only it will led us down the same bigger problem with how people could survive all the games, but there clearly wasn’t room for them all to survive. We do get the hits of what has happened in previous escape rooms with the character, which will play on your mind and offer up the bigger picture continuing to grow. This is where the film shines, with the world building, it just keeps us wanting to know more, even if I would love to see a certain type of character added to the universe.
Themes – Escape Room Tournament of Champions is a horror thriller following on from the previous film Escape Room, we get the deadly rooms, which are all masterly designed to take us into a host of different environments, each with something different that could be deadly, with the scariest thing about what is going on, is the fact it takes place in the middle of New York city.
Final Thoughts –Escape Room Tournament of Champions is a great addition to the horror world, with the continuing world building and excellent escape room designs.
