In Theaters: Zoey finds herself trapped in another escape room with fellow survivors. Does she have what it takes to outlive the best? Or will she die like the rest?
Release date July 16, 2021
Violence C- Sexual Content A Profanity D Substance Use BWhy is Escape Room: Tournament of Champions rated PG-13? The MPAA rated Escape Room: Tournament of Champions PG-13 for violence, terror/peril and strong language.
Run Time: 88 minutes
Even though Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) survived their first experience in a Minos escape room, life hasn’t quite gone back to normal for either of them. The trauma and paranoia they live with has made acclimating to normal life difficult. Zoey thinks that the only way to get her life back is to bring down the entire Minos Corporation and make sure that they never hurt anyone again. But once she and Ben make it to New York to track down their headquarters, she finds herself in a subway car with four strangers – and then the doors seal, the car decouples, and they find themselves right where they started: trapped in a Minos escape room. The catch? This time, everyone in the room has already survived a brush with Minos. They won’t be so lucky a second time…
I just have to say that Taylor Russell is far, far too good for most of the movies I’ve seen her in. She is typically the highlight, and that’s no exception here. The dialogue is slightly less natural than a department store mannequin with implants, but she does her absolute darndest to make it work. The other actors certainly try their best but making this dialogue work is like swimming the Atlantic with a boat anchor around your neck and shark bait down your swim trunks. It’s only going to end in disaster.
This film very courteously starts with a recap of the previous installment, which I appreciated, since I did my best to forget that movie as soon as I left the theatre. But as with Escape Room, the major issues here are violence and profanity. The swearing is pretty much limited to scatological cursing, but in such volume that I began to wonder if a sewer pipe had burst onto the script at some point. I imagine it made life easier for the actors, as memorizing their lines was primarily just that one word. The violence is imaginative, but only in the sense that you have to imagine 90% of what’s going on. These are basically Saw films for thirteen-year-olds.
If that sounds unappealing to you, that’s because it is. It isn’t actively bad, but I almost wish it had been – at least that would have been more interesting. This is just another odorous bubble in the corporate bathtub, another sad, perfunctory sequel whose sole purpose is to tease another sequel. My only hope is that, having now run the gamut of stereotypical death traps, the writers start running out of steam by the next film. If they don’t, I fear the actors as well as the script may find themselves buried up to their necks in excrement.
Directed by Adam Robitel. Starring Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, and Indya Moore. Running time: 88 minutes. Theatrical release July 16, 2021. Updated October 2, 2021
Keith Hawkes graduated from Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada with a degree in English and History. His interests are movies, American literature, science fiction, almost every kind of music, and museums. He enjoys criticizing films for fun - although he's okay with being paid for it.
