Written by: Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch, Oren Uziel
Starring: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Holland Roden, Indya Moore
Rating: [2/5]
As several game shows have demonstrated, when you have previous winners, a way to freshen up the programming comes from reuniting them to play the game against each other. The best take on the best, in what could be described as a tournament of champions. Something intriguing, but in this feature, the participants somehow do not have the same willingness to partake in the exercise once again. I cannot imagine why.
Following their survival of the last escape room experience put on by Minos Corporation, Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) aggressively try to expose them. They travel to New York to accomplish this but once they enter a subway train they realize they have been sucked into another game, with the other individuals there also representing previous survivors of the game.
The likelihood of these previous winners all appearing on the same subway train with no others must have caused Minos some logistical stress. Trying to imagine the poor individual who could have entered that subway train just trying to get home and find themselves in this hellish experience would have made this film a bit funnier and tragic at the same time but the omnipotent Minos Corporation can do no wrong whatsoever to an absurd degree.
They have this precision in the way they cover up these atrocities where one needs to believe in magic to justify what this corporation pulls off. This ridiculousness ultimately sours the entire film, especially when we get to the end. When the finale passes through and displays what occurs, it immediately made me go from enjoying this movie to the score I gave it. They got away with a horrendous ending last time but on this occasion, it proved a bridge too far in their attempt to remove any stakes into getting to the truth of this corporation making much of the feature feel like quite the waste.
When the film does shine, it certainly entertains, which cannot be taken away from it. The scene creating much of the grace this feature squandered away with its ending took place in the New York subway train. Something simply crafted but incredibly effective in the way the characters needed to work together in order to survive or bear the consequences of electrocution. Reintroducing the audience into this world in a devious way also displays quite the smooth transition of its story where it quickly navigates from a touching moment between characters to a return of their worst nightmare.
Various other set pieces of this feature do well enough to entertain, which also includes the bank scene. Certainly, a sequence bringing major stress in the countdown on which they must complete the task set before them. This ultimately serves as the selling point of the film and the feature handles it very well in ensuring a certain sense of creativity emanating with each new room they encounter. Each space has its mystery and a horrid way these characters could die from it all serving as entertainment for us as audience members.
Returning to the feature we have Taylor Russell who does a decent job once again in this lead role. The personality of this character has shown progression compared to the woman we saw in the previous movie. Russell deserves to have her own horror franchise and I certainly hope she continues to come back to make even more films centered on the rooms from hell as she always manages to find herself in them and miraculously get out much like Sidney Prescott with the endless interactions with Ghostface.
Entertaining in spots but unfortunately a final act and ending tanking the entire feature, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions brings together the all-stars of survivors together and ups the ante of the challenges and the stakes. It certainly goes off the rails in ways to negatively impact the feature as a whole where I would not mind more entries to this franchise but they have to find a better way to conclude them. They seek to conclude these films in a shocking way but only discredit the entire feature in the most asinine ways leaving me seething at the very end, which certainly was not the intention of the filmmakers, I assume.
Films with Josh 