Escape Room (PG-13)
Bloody Disgusting; IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Sony Pictures; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; Hulu; Movies Anywhere; Vudu; YouTube

This came out in 2019, but I didn't see it until 2024. Apparently there were at least a couple of unrelated movies with the same name prior to this, but I haven't seen them and have no plans to do so. I'm pretty sure they were much smaller films than this, in terms of budget and release and everything. Anyway, it's about a group of six strangers who each receive a puzzle box that, once solved, provides them with an invitation to an escape room, with a prize of $10,000 for the winner(s). We only get introduced to three of the characters prior to their arriving at the escape room, but over the course of the movie we learn more about the backstories of all six of them. And the reason each of them was invited turns out to be a theme they all share (which I won't spoil).

The first three we meet are a college student named Zoey Davis, a grocery store stockboy named Ben Miller, and a stockbroker named Jason Walker. Once they arrive at the escape room, we meet an Iraq War veteran named Amanda Harper (Deborah Ann Woll, whom I knew from Daredevil), a truck driver named Mike Nolan (Tyler Labine), and an escape room enthusiast named Danny Khan. They get to know each other a bit while in the waiting room, before finally realizing the escape room has already begun. Things soon get very real and very dangerous, with death as a real possibility for all of them. They have to make their way through a series of rooms with different themes, and work together to survive. I don't want to spoil any details of any of the rooms, nor will I reveal who survives and who doesn't. And I'm not going to explain the reason all this was happening, but I think it's rather chilling.

It's not a great movie, but I liked it well enough. I found all the rooms and characters reasonably interesting. I'm not quite sure whether to classify this as psychological horror or a thriller, so I'll link to it in both sections (but the actual review will be in the former, since that's what Wikipedia calls it). Anyway, I can't get too deep into analyzing the movie without spoilers, so... I guess I don't know what else to say. But I do look forward to watching the sequel someday.

Followed by "Escape Room: Tournament of Champions"