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Escape Room

 A less lurid version of Saw, Hostel, and Final Destination comes from Insidious: The Last Key helmsman Adam Robitel using pillaging, resourceful hosts and surveillance to primarily entice a millennial draw for a five-figure stipend for its obliging participants to assuage their anxieties. A routine irksomeness finally pervades what might be tantalizing for a while in its orchestration and visuals. 

Escape Room tries to one-up its titular teasing gaming nature to solve (with keys and codes) when the stakes become life-and-death while succumbing to stereotypes and staying less jagged when a half-dozen ragtag folks assemble in a Chicago waiting room around Thanksgiving where the competition has already heated up.

What becomes a high-tech deathtrap for its maze runners from the box invite they’ve received has a dutiful quality reminiscent of what came from the likes of Agatha Christie with much enthusiasm from its super-nerd guru of these spaces (Nik Rodani) into the inherent mortality in its set-up. Also, there’s an Iraq war veteran (Deborah Ann Woll), an outdoorsy, ordinary bloke (Tyler Labine), boozy grocery clerk (Logan Miller), as well as smarmy investment banker (Jay Ellis) and Taylor Russell’s Zoey, a restive, if diffident collegian who’s into quantum physics postulating supported by her professor in this chancy endeavor.

In some kind of New Age William Castle fashion — think of it like Facebook terror — flashbacks are positioned to reveal individual susceptibilities in experiences for creepy effect. The obstacles are tailored with more flavor than these characters when it comes to a frozen lake or, especially, in the case of a bar’s ceiling which is actually the floor.

What tests knowledge and ingenuity to desperately survive and advance doesn’t make Escape Room nearly as enigmatically involving as, say, David Fincher’s similarly-themed 1997 The Game which starred Michael Douglas as a successful banker who goes through a lot from a seemingly harmless gift from his brother (played by Sean Penn) which he hesitantly accepts. A potential eerie retro brainteaser with interactive resonance here is a just a collapsible dream at the beginning of Hollywood’s new year.

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Review written by Jim

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Movie Information

Release Date:   January 4, 2019
Released by:   Sony Pictures Releasing
MPAA Rating:   Rated PG-13 for terror/perilous action, violence, some suggestive material and language.
Director:   Adam Robitel
Starring:   Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Tyler Labine, Jay Ellis and Nik Dodani

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