Film Review: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (Dir: Adam Robitel)

 

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions ('21)

Directed by Adam Robitel

Written by Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch, and Oren Uziel 

You pretty much know what you're getting into with a movie when it ostensibly has a "previously on" segment. Marrying voice over and a montage of footage from the first film, Tournament of Champions gives viewers a quick reminder of what occurred prior (or a catchup for those who missed the first one) before jumping into the new story - and oddly sort of ignores how the first film ends? Our two leads return, with Taylor Russell once again capably carrying the film on her shoulders (she's a smart and elegant young performer) and Logan Miller once again... showing up to set. 

Much like the first entry, the high points of Tournament involve the elaborate puzzle sequences and the suspense that they are able to build. The Escape Room series functions as a sort of Saw-light - less violence, less quick cuts, younger characters - with an emphasis on increasingly complicated puzzle rooms taking the place of the traps and just as many convoluted twists and turns that frankly don't make a whole lot of sense. The puzzle rooms in this sequel are perhaps even more fun and impressive than those in the first, with fantastic production design and director Adam Robitel very effectively ramping up the tension. Scenes set in a subway car, in a bank, on a beach, and on the streets of New York are thoughtfully designed to function in the context of this film. I enjoy "playing along" with the puzzles as our characters take steps to figure out how to escape each room and not, you know, die.

A new supporting cast joins our de facto heroes this time around, and my word are these characters thinly drawn. As an acting assignment, being a secondary lead in this film involves a lot of screaming and not a lot of nuance. That's fine! It is what it is. Only Indya Moore makes any sort of impression, and how delightful that she gets to play a woman and that just being that. This is the sort of casting I hope we see more of going forward. I do wish these new characters had a bit more of a backstory or their motivations were better understood, especially with the Tournament of Champions concept (which, hilariously, a character shouts out as scary nonsense occurs around them) but with an 88 minute running time I suppose beggars can't be choosers.

Where the film fails is in the building of the mythos, as it were. This sequel is even more convoluted and makes even less sense than the first, with the final act revealing a slew of twist and turns that simply do not hold up to any sort of intellectual scrutiny. The more one thinks about anything that happens in this movie other than the design and thrills of the puzzles, the less enjoyable and more overtly stupid it becomes. That being said, the puzzle rooms take up a good portion of the film and they do provide just enough thrills and intrigue to make it all work. And yes, when the inevitable 3rd and 4th and 5th and 6th and 13th entry of this series comes out, I'll go see them too. I enjoy me some puzzle rooms, I suppose!