No Escape Room (2018) – A Movie A Day 2021 #56
No Escape Room (2018) – A Movie A Day 2021 #56
I had some extra time after watching the latest kung fu movie in my mini-marathon, so I turned on Netflix to see what was new. I don’t use Netflix as often as I probably should, so there were a lot of things added since the last time I browsed. I tend to spend way too long looking for something to watch when I begin browsing Netflix, so I decided to just take a look at the first thing that caught my eye. That movie ended up being No Escape Room, and I thought it was pretty good.
No Escape Room is a supernatural horror movie about a father and daughter who get stranded in a small town and pass the time waiting for their car to be repaired by trying out a local escape room. If you’re unfamiliar with an escape room, it’s basically a game where people are locked in a room together and have to solve riddles and puzzles to unlock a door and escape. The father, Michael, and daughter, Karen, seem to have something of a strained relationship, and the weekend was supposed to be a bonding trip for the two of them. So, Michael tends to try too hard, and Karen tends to barely try at all when it comes to forming a good relationship. The activity of doing an escape room might be good for them though.
Michael and Karen are joined by three strangers, Andrew, Melanie, and Tyler, who are also there to participate in the escape room. Melanie is the escape room expert, her boyfriend Tyler doesn’t want to be there, and Andrew is something of a mystery. With all of the necessary character types included to help explain the game and create tension among themselves, the movie moves along well with only the necessary amount of exposition and explanation. Things seem off about the escape room right away though, and the escape room ends up being an escape house with some eerily realistic dangers lurking about. Mysteries are built and unraveled, people are separated, and scariness ensues.
No Escape Room is a TV movie so there are clear spots where commercial breaks would be inserted, but if those weren’t there I wouldn’t have expected it to be made for TV. It’s kind of scary at times, there a bit of blood and violence, and overall I really enjoyed the mystery and the tone. As the movie goes on, the mystery of the house does feel like it begins to get a bit too convoluted to the point where it barely makes much sense anymore, but it was still fun enough to watch. By that point I was invested enough in Karen’s story that the parts of the movie that felt out of place didn’t bother me too much. The movie has a very campy ending, but again, I though it was fine.
For me, the best bits were towards the middle of the movie where we were still learning things and the house still felt like a big puzzle. After a while it becomes more psychological and supernatural, and that wasn’t quite as fun for me. I still enjoyed it though. I’d recommend No Escape Room for a light horror movie with more mystery than scare, but don’t expect many satisfying conclusions for the characters. Some of them come to very abrupt ends once their usefulness to the plot has been exhausted.