No Escape Room Review (Film, 2018)
content warning: gore, violence against women
It’s common for horror to experiment with trends in society. Cellphones, social media, even viral ghost stories from Reddit have led to books, games, TV shows, films, art, and more. Shoot, one of my favorite musicals is Bat Boy, based on a recurring character in the Weekly World News. Escape rooms became a pop culture obsession, so of course multiple horror/thriller films have come around.
No Escape Room has a solid story. A teenager and her father have to change plans for a visitation weekend when their car breaks down. They decide to try an escape room just outside of town. They’re partnered up with three other players. Their job is to find out what happened to five missing people in the Inventor's mansion before the hour runs out.
No Escape Room has a great haunted house style. That’s really the genius of using the escape room concept for a horror film. These games are often set in highly stylized environments filled with random objects and secrets hiding everywhere. One small thing will be off, which is the clue the players need to unravel the thread that binds the themes together.
The brilliance of those older haunted house films in the American style is the production design. You build a fully realized world filled with strange and beautiful objects. It’s just slightly off because of the scale of perfection covered by signs of neglect—a library covered in cobwebs, foggy windows on a curio cabinet, etc. When things go wrong, you question everything you’ve seen before, hoping there’s some kind of clue to explain what’s happening.
Escape rooms play on the same principles. At first, you’re trying to guess what could be a clue or not. It technically could be anything that doesn’t tear the room apart at the foundation. Once you find that riddle behind a painting or playing on a record, you begin to notice everything else that is wrong and make progress. The ticking clock adds tension, but you can ultimately escape at any point by saying the right word or phrase.
No Escape Room breaks these rules. The escape word doesn’t always work. The rooms seem more dangerous than they should be. They use their own voices and images against them as they try to solve all the riddles and mysteries of the house. The scares are good and the performers do well reacting to the ever-changing rules of the game.
The big downside is this is a made for TV movie. It has some beats built in, complete with blackouts, for commercial breaks. These are jumpscares designed to keep the audience guessing what will happen next. It’s a great technique to maintain an audience with an 80 minute film in a two hour time slot, but just becomes a little too predictable when watched all at once. These beats are the foundation of the form and couldn’t be edited around for a smoother experience.
No Escape Room is a solid horror story playing on a trend. It’s polished with good acting all around. The production design elevates what could be a typical made for TV movie into more of an experience.
No Escape Room is streaming on Netflix.
