Could have been a clever thriller but this is marketed to the incorrect crowd, it worked though, considering its success. The storyline needed development and the characters are full of exposition. I liked parts of the story and the overall ending is fun, but the filmmakers try way too much. A sequel might course correct the series. I thought this would be guilty fun and it is to a certain extent, but it didn't hold a lot of story to build on. The sequel doesn't have to tread over the pitfalls of the first and I believe it will improve the concept and storyline. 18/04/2019

Though I haven't seen Vincenzo Natali's 1997 film, Cube, I have seen about thirty-two Saw movies and, in all honesty, could take or leave a PG-13 version of those movies that decided to utilize that same premise while also capitalizing on the recent fad of going with your friends to an "escape room" and seeing if you can figure out the clues in enough time to, well...escape. It's a nice little riff writer/director Adam Robitel (Insidious: The Last Key) has come up with, sure, but he's essentially re-contextualized that aforementioned Natali picture for modern audiences as the synopsis for Cube is surprisingly accurate for Robitel's Escape Room. "Six complete strangers of widely varying personality types are involuntarily placed in an endless maze containing deadly traps." Change that "involuntarily" to "voluntarily" and you have yourself a whole new movie. Despite the glaring similarities between itself and a number of other subgenre peers though, Escape Room still manages to make itself feel fresh in ways that emphasize the journey rather than leave it all up to the destination. Escape Room doesn't necessarily improve upon any of these well-worn tropes, but it isn't a completely wasteful take on the premise either; it doesn't re-invent the wheel, but it re-designs it to the extent a wheel can be re-designed. read the whole review at www.reviewsfromabed.com