Escape Room 2 ★★☆☆☆ | Movie Review

Synopsis


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.

Directed by Adam Robitel.
Written by Will Honley, Maria Malnik and Daniel Tuch.
Starring Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Thomas Cocquerel, Holland Roden, Indya Moore and Carlito Olivero.
Released available on Sky Cinema and Now from February 26th 2022.


Review


Did the first film need a sequel? Probably not.

Having found their way out of their escape room, Zoey and Ben decide to investigate the mysterious corporation behind their ordeal. In their quest for the truth, they find themselves pulled into another maze of escape rooms with other survivors of Minos.

As far as the plot goes on this, a fair bit is just new rooms to escape. And at this point we're potentially just in an eternal spiral of Escape Room films.

Though these characters all have something in common, they could not be more different. And while that's totally legitimate, it also makes the film very busy. Given the nature of the action as well, it's a lot more chaotic than I was comfortable with.

The acting is sadly, entirely average. At certain points, the ridiculous deductive powers of the group felt even more nonsensical than they would have been under normal circumstances. It was very much a snowball of acting, plot and script.

Despite the similarities, I did like the rooms that we came across. (By that I mean they're fine when you suspend several layers of belief and logic.) Some of the effects looked particularly good in them, and the transitions within the beach scene stood out for me.

What I don't like is the potential neverending spiral I mentioned. The first film was enjoyable, but I'm not sure it really warranted a second. Is there a plan? Because why would you jump straight to this point? You had four other people with stories that could have been explored before jumping back in with the same two characters from the first film, I'm a little baffled as to why, if you're going to copy and paste, you wouldn't transfer it directly, get four other films out of it before combining the world.

What you should do


This doesn't bring a massive amount of new ideas to the table, definitely one to wait to watch on streaming, and in the meantime there are plenty of other escape room films you could watch.

Movie thing you wish you could take home


A relaxing beach holiday.

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