It’s curious how lately these kind of “Escape Room” events are quite popular among young people in North America, Europe and East Asia. Those venues where you go with your group of friends and have to face all kinds of tests, quizzes and quests, either physical or mental, depending on the kind of theme the game is about. Perhaps the popularity of a franchise like SAW, where the evil Jigsaw played deadly games with groups of random people has something to do with this new hype. Or the fact that escaping from a zombie apocalypse sounds like a fun idea for a weekend, as far as no one is really hurt. I could call it the evolution of classic paintball or laser war games, taking this basic team missions into solving puzzles and getting all the clues together in order to avoid the traps. The most common themes and storylines that are often found in escape rooms include zombies, haunted houses, science laboratories, prisons, pirates, hostage, and kidnappings.
It was just a matter of time that a movie based on this kind of games was to appear. Taking these challenges and puzzles in real life as a game, but then it seems it is not so much of a game anymore because some real deaths are happening. And this is what Escape Room (2017) is about, four friends deciding to go to one of these Real Escape Game (REG) experiences only to find out they are not playing a game anymore.
Noah Dorsey wrote the story together with Will Wernick who also directs. Evan Williams, Annabelle Stephenson, Elisabeth Hower, Dan J. Johnson, John Ierardi, Kelly Delson, Iris Avalee, Darrel Cherney and Cathy Diane Tomlin star in the movie.
Director Will Wernick has written and is set to direct Escape Room Moscow (2019) soon, following a very similar plot but this time the group of friends travels to the Russian city to participate in the dangerous game. The movie is currently in pre-production and the cast is yet unknown. So it seems like several “Escape Room” films are on the way, the fucked up games won’t end that easily.
Escape Room (2017) was screened at the Seattle International Film Festival last year, and has been released in some countries, both theatrical and directly as domestic video. In other countries the movie is unreleased but might see the light in the upcoming months. In any case, here you can check out the official trailer:
