I'm on a quest to watch and review every horror film of 2019... we'll see how long I can keep up!

First release of the year: Escape Room

Director: Adam Robitel (The Taking of Deborah Logan; Insidious: The Last Key)

Release Date: January 4, 2019

Fear Factor: Suspenseful rather than scary

Gore: Minimal

You might like this movie if… you enjoy the deranged puzzle-master aspect of the Saw franchise but could do without the torture porn

Overall Rating: B

Escape Room shot out of the gate as the first theatrical horror release of 2019, and here’s to the naïve hope that the rest of the year delivers similarly entertaining fare. Fast-paced, tense, and engaging (if a bit short on substance), the Adam Robitel-directed film puts a sinister twist on our latest cultural obsession: escape rooms. (Deliberately lock yourself in a room in order to feel confounded by vague clues and then realize, once half your group has broken down and begged the game master for hints, that you’ve spent the last half hour trying to decode a red herring? Sounds like a good time to me!)

The plot of Escape Room will feel familiar to anyone who has experienced the Saw movies: a group of strangers, lured together for reasons that are at first unknown, must solve a series of increasingly deadly puzzles in order to survive. The setting in this case, of course, is the titular escape room… but this isn’t just any old escape room. It’s got frozen lakes and giant ovens and trick floors that unexpectedly drop slow-footed victims into a plunging abyss. (I actually found myself thinking, more than once, that this looked like a hell of a lot more fun than any of the escape rooms I’ve experienced in real life. Minus the death, of course.)

The film effectively delivers a number of tense, suspenseful moments that left my theater audience audibly gasping (particularly during the upside-down poolroom scene, which plays out as an extended, cleverly paced cliffhanger). The characters, of course, find themselves killed off one by one (spoiler, not a spoiler), leaving shy yet surprisingly spunky Zoey (Taylor Russell) as the final girl tasked with figuring out who is behind the deadly escape room and for what sinister purpose. The payoff, once it comes, is a bit of a letdown, but the ending leaves ample ground for further development in sequels.

Overall, Escape Room is good solid entertainment that delivers on suspense even if it lacks emotional depth. A silly good time, and well worth the price of admission.

E.F. LaGrand
www.theyearinhorror.com