This seems like the next logical thing to review in this blog for today’s random post. I want to see this since this might work if I wanted this on DVD and get the sequel on DVD, I could get the version of this that has the extended addition that has James Frain in it to see it. That’s why I need to see this movie to better understand it and how it works, even if the recap of the beginning of the sequel spoils a lot of it. But let’s get to the review!
We begin with a random room being shown full of various things. A guy falls through the ceiling in terror as he has to find a ten digit code. He tries to get a book and see another person die to find a clock. The room is closing in on him during this time. It doesn’t seem like he can get out. And it doesn’t look like he does. It looks like he dies in the room as it crushes him to death, the fate that people in Star Wars had avoided in the end.
Going back three days earlier, a woman is in class, but is too shy to speak up. It is about to be a break for Thanksgiving. Her name is Zoey and she is told to do one thing that scares her over the break. We then see a black man talking to other people, but not much can be gathered from that yet. Later, we see what might be the man from earlier talking to a person at a store. His name is Ben. He is told to make a friend sometime outside. Back to the other man, we see a person get a box that won’t open.
Zoey doesn’t want to go to her friend’s place for Thanksgiving. There is a shaking going on that puts her on her nerves. But I can’t tell what this flashback is about yet. She bids farewell to her friend or roommate Alison and gets another box. Ben gets a box with a message as well. The three of them all try to figure the box when a message opens about Minos escape rooms.
A woman named Amanda shows up at the escape room. Michael is another person there. She is also met by other people there as six people wind up gathered in the room talking to each other preparing for the room in the waiting room. One of them men here has been in all sorts of other escape rooms before. When Ben tries to leave, the door knob comes off and a man realizes that this could be the very escape room that they are looking for.
Amanda realizes that all of the letters are addressed to the same person. The room starts to heat up at some point due to what Zoey tired to do to get out of here. Taking the fire extinguisher off makes even more of the room heat up. But it has a key leading to the woman in the waiting room which is a mannequin in a recording. This really starts to freak out Amanda as the room gets even hotter as fans start to show up. Zoey notices injuries on Amanda and everyone starts to freak out even more.
Zoey notices a clue about coasters and they push these buttons in order to get out of there. But some of them are stuck below in the meantime pushing the way out. Zoey seeks to fill cups completely full of water to open the way out. Amanda has flashbacks to combat. The other people seeks to use what water is left to keep the coasters full of liquid to get out of there in time. The room fills with fire as all of them manage to get out of there on time.
In the next room, Amanda seeks to use a snuck in phone to get out of here, but there is no signal. The escape room expert is convinced that this is still just really immersive. Ben freaks out about the message as it makes him think about a personal trauma. But he gets the code out of a lock for them to go what seems like the outside of an icy place.
Danny, the escape room expert, notices the place getting colder as he is still convinced that no one would get hurt in the end. Amanda thinks that they have to fight over limited resources. Michael finds a fishing pole after a hole is found in the room in the ice below. Zoey goes out and figures out that true north is a lie. She finds something in a stuffed bear’s mouth. It is a magnet. They find a key that is frozen in a cube. They get Ben’s lighter.
Danny falls under the ice which fell through beneath him. He is under the ice and the rest of them seek to get him out of the current that sucks him away. He dies under the ice. Ben gets blamed for this. There is a game master involved that they think could be one of the five of them.
The black guy convinces them to use their body heat to get the key out of the box. They don’t know who did this to them. Every detail was thought of. The black guy is named Jason. They find a door that they open before the five of them make it to the new room.
The new room is an upside down game room. They seemed to have gone up through an elevator. A phone falls down. The song Downtown starts to play. Amanda climbs up to a higher place. Zoey figures out that this is a giant sliding puzzle. She goes to it to figure it out. They figure out the code, but the danger continues. Zoey continues to have flashbacks to her trauma.
While a code might have been figured out and an eight ball is found, Amanda has difficulties getting to the rest of the four of them. She is able to give them the eight ball, but she falls down. The four of them leave the room to another place.
This new room is like a triage center. They find notes about all of them and they were the only survivors who went through a crisis. Zoey was on the news, which is why and how some of them recognized them. They finally learn each other’s back stories. Minos knew everything about them. Only one of them seems set to survive. The next video plays, which sure is convenient that they had this moment to themselves before the next danger presented itself. They have five minutes to escape.
Zoey seeks to destroy all of the cameras watching them as she thinks that’s the only way it will get them out of here. They want to find a way to increase the heart rate. Michael wants to get them out of there with his high heart rate. Jason wants to increase his already high heart rate. The clock runs out which fills the room with poison. But Jason uses it on his heart which gets the door to open. There is a way out of there which the rest of them want to use. She is convinced that there is another way out. She falls to the floor of the room having passed out.
Mike is now dead with Zoey possibly dead as well, for those that haven’t seen the sequel like I have. I guess we’ll see what happened with her later. Anyways, Ben blames Jason for his friend’s death that made Jason the only survivor. They go easily to the next room, but something makes it seem like they are going crazy due to things on their hand. They need to find an antidote before they leave. Ben is able to find it. But it is hard to tell what is going on for sure.
The possibly seizure inducing room makes things seem crazy and hard to understand. But it does seem like Jason is dead. This is how Ben falls into the room from the beginning of the movie. Back in room five where Zoey is, there are two people who see the two bodies. Zoey used an oxygen mask to survive and attacks these two people.
Meanwhile, Ben is able to escape his room somehow. He had escaped the final room. This is where we get to where the game master is. He is different from the puzzle maker. He talks to Ben. Zoey starts to come with a gun that she took from the people. Did luck have anything to do with his survival? He had the lowest odds to win and was the long shot. But the horse doesn’t get a prize for winning the Kentucky Derby. The game master seeks to kill Ben, but Zoey comes out to shoot this person and save Ben. With Ben’s help, the game master is killed dead. They get out of the room.
Ben is treated with Zoey being taken to a police station. They take her to where the place was, but they can’t find evidence of what he suggested. They don’t seem to believe her. There were too many drugs in Ben’s system for them to know if he could back up her story or not.
Six months later, Zoey and Ben talk. It seems like there are fake ways that the other people have died in other different realities. She can’t let the game go. She wants to lead them to a place in Manhattan. She does not want to run from the problem at hand. They want to find where to go.
On a plane that seems ready to crash and people having to find other ways through, we see that this is only a simulation going on regarding Zoey’s fear of flying. It seems that Minos is ready to go for another round and have her play again. And that’s the end of this movie.
What do I think of this movie? Well, there are obvious pros and cons. It works well as a thriller, even if it seems unrealistic in some ways. It seems convenient that there is always lull in the action from room to room for there to be some downtime to learn important things or simply talk for a bit uninterrupted before Minos goes back to trying to kill them in each room. The biggest flaw of this movie is that it could be said to be a rip-off of the well known Saw franchise to some degree. While I may never see any of the Saw franchise, its similarities can’t be overstated.
Still, I think that this is a good movie and worth seeing. Its ending leaves more to be desired and so does the ending of its sequel, depending on which ending you get. I don’t understand why extended means everything past the New York City room is different in the sequel. I don’t know how much of it I should talk about or potentially spoil. But I have to get and then watch the extended version of the sequel at some point in time to potentially blog about the different ending even though I have it set up that this blog has the least amount of random posts in it. For now, this is Adam Decker, signing off.
