I like escape rooms. They're fun and interesting and there's a lot of cool things you can do with them. I've been to three of them and escaped one of them. And I got to see my friend Arn eaten by a zombie in two of them and in the last we watched him flip out as he got eaten. When the first one came out, I reviewed, I liked it, I thought it was fun. But I didn't get a chance to see the second one until now. So let's talk about...
Escape Room 2: Tournament of Champions (2021)
I've been wanting to watch this movie ever since I checked out the original a few years ago, but unfortunately, it only showed up on streaming sites that I didn't want to pay for. I liked the first one well enough. I thought the escape rooms were cool and imaginative. The movie was also a massive success; making 150-million-money on a nine-million-money budget. With those numbers, the question wasn't, "Will they make a sequel?" It became, "When are they making a sequel?" Turns out the answer was two years.
The movie picks up a bit after the events of the first movie. Zoey and Ben are doing what they can to expose the shadowy organization behind the murderous escape rooms. It also dives into how terrible life is for them. Before they get lured into the death trap, the movie shows how messed up the experience made them. Anytime they go into a building they wonder if they've just walked into another trap. They're constantly looking over their shoulders knowing the company will be coming for them. It gives the movie a bit more depth but doesn't spend a lot of time on their shared PTSD. While Ben wants to stay away, Zoey can't live that way and is determined to expose the baddies. You really can't blame her either, she survived the first movie, but she hasn't lived since. Ben, on the other hand, despite his misgivings, is her ride-or-die and he agrees to join.
I have to say I like the relationship between Zoey and Ben. They have a couple of flirty moments but for the most part, they're friends. The two care about each other and the movie doesn't get bogged down with filler "will-they-or-won't-they." They share so much trauma and while Ben takes some convincing, he follows her lead because he knows she's right. It's a fun friendship and the two have good chemistry. I'd follow their story through more movies if they keep making them.
I don't want to give this movie more credit than it's due, but I like the different characters and how the company is adapting. If you remember, Ben was the "survivor" in the group because everyone thought Zoey was dead. Ben's "prize" for winning was an attempted strangulation until he was saved by Zoey at the last minute. Since then, the company has been letting someone survive the game to create a "tournament of champions." It's a cool idea but leads to my biggest problem with this movie. The shadowy organization has like, reality-warping powers.
There's no other way to describe how they were able to get all these people together. If you think about it for more than one second; about a million things need to go right for it to happen. Our band of heroes narrowly avoided the plane trap because Zoey got cold feet right before boarding. Instead, they drive to New York after finding the secret headquarters. When they get there, a man steals her necklace, forcing a chase into the subway. Not only does he escape from them right before the door closes, sealing them both in, they happen to be in a car, alone, with the sole survivors of previous games. I can suspend disbelief a lot, especially when it comes to horror. But the amount of control, power and luck to get all those people in the same place, at the same time, at the exact moment they're needed to be there, without any other civilians around is just too much for me.
Outside of that, it's a fun movie. The traps are always the highlight and I love the creativity in them. The first one they get stuck in is my favorite. The group of heroes are trapped in the electrified subway car and it looks very cool. Shots of the bolts of electricity are such a cool visual and hammer home just how precarious these games are going to be. I enjoy the moments when they escape their room and you get the calm before the storm. I love watching them walk into their death trap and. slowly piecing together how the room is trying to kill them. It's always imaginative and fun in the most grotesque type of way.
While most of these characters are there to serve as a body count, I liked the cast quite a bit. It also showed just how depraved the company is. One of the characters, who we first meet passed out on the subway train is a priest. For his game, he was going against a group of priests simply because the baddies thought it would be fun to test a bunch of priests. He survived the game and had to watch his fellow priests all die horribly. From the moment you learn his story, you see how much survivor's guilt this guy has. He can't wrap his head around that he survived while everyone else died and it causes him to make really dumb decisions. For him, there MUST be a reason he's alive while the others aren't. While he does some dumb things, they're not your normal horror movie bad decisions. He's broken and you can see how messed up he is and understand why he's doing it.
His mental state also leads to my favorite line in the movie. They're in a bank and the way out is closing. He doesn't believe they have time to figure it out so he blindly walks across the booby-trapped floor. It's incredibly tense and when he's walking he tells his pleading friends that finding the path is why he's here. He was chosen for this and that's why he survived. Naturally, once he says that he steps on the wrong tile and is nearly sliced up by a laser, instead he's knocked unconscious after hitting his head. Once they get him off the floor, Ben lifts him on his shoulders and yells, "I've got the Chosen One." I laughed out loud at that line, the setup and delivery were well done and it's said with the perfect amount of exasperation and mockery. The remaining characters don't take up too much time, but they're all unique and fun in their own ways and two of them suffer just a horrible, horrible death. I know everyone outside of Ben and Zoey is there to die, but they all add something different that makes the movie work.
I can't leave without talking about the ending, because depending on where you watched it, you saw something different. If you saw it in theaters, you were treated to the return of Amanda from the first Escape Room. She had survived her fall and was forced to be the next game master. It's not a bad twist and it was cool because I liked the character. But, if you saw it outside of theaters, you were treated to a father and her daughter and a pretty insane reveal at the end. The movie theater version ends with Zoey and Ben ending up on the plane trap set up at the end of the first movie, while the one I watched set up a new baddie that finally has the gloves coming off. As far as the franchise goes, setting up a new antagonist makes more sense because they want to make more. As far as the storyline itself, I don't know, I think I like having Amanda back.
To sum it up, it's an enjoyable movie if you can get passed how this evil corporation has the God-like powers to move all the Chess pieces anywhere they want to be exactly when they want them to be there, logic be damned. Still, the characters are fun, the rooms are cool, some of the kills are brutal and I like I said, will go see every single one of these movies as long as they keep making them.
7.5 Dr. Chainsaws!
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