{"id":9195,"date":"2024-11-30T01:15:12","date_gmt":"2024-11-30T06:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9195"},"modified":"2024-11-30T01:15:12","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T06:15:12","slug":"escape-room-tournament-of-champions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/30\/escape-room-tournament-of-champions\/","title":{"rendered":"Escape Room: Tournament of Champions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Escape Room: Tournament of Champions<\/strong> (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, terror\/peril, strong language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Adam Robitel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch and Oren Uziel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Carey and Brian Tyler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Marc Spicer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 16, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Indya Moore, Holland Roden, Thomas Cocquerel, Carlito Olivero, Lucy Newman-Williams, Matt Esof, Scott Coker.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $25.3M (US)\/$66M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I didn\u2019t expect to like the first Escape Room when it came out two years ago. It bore all the signs of a stinker- e.g. early January release date, PG-13 rating and a premise that\u2019s essentially a toned-down version of the Saw movies. Despite these factors, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It appears others shared my opinion. It ended up being a moderate hit at the box office bringing in $57M on a $9M budget.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wasn\u2019t too surprised when a sequel was announced. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions <\/strong>was originally slated for release last year, but was delayed due to COVID-19. It got moved around a lot on the schedule- at one point, it was scheduled to open on Jan. 1 of this year- before landing a mid-summer release date. I can\u2019t say it was one of my most anticipated titles of 2021, but I wasn\u2019t dreading it like Space Jam 2. The previews looked good, but we all know how reliable they are, don\u2019t we? I\u2019m happy to announce that Escape Room: Tournament of Champions<\/strong> is a pretty good horror-thriller and a very good sequel.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Director Adam Robitel picks up right where he left off in the previous movie with surviving \u201csole survivors\u201d Zoe (Russell, Waves) and Ben (Miller, Love, Simon) heading to Manhattan to confront Minos, the shadowy organization behind the deadly escape rooms. She wants them to be held accountable for their actions, especially since the police didn\u2019t believe her story. They manage to find their corporate HQ by way of coordinates hidden in the company logo. One there, they\u2019re lured onto a subway car which turns out to be the first of the new death traps. It also turns out the other passengers- Rachel (Roden, Teen Wolf), Brianna (Moore, Pose), Nathan (Cocquerel, Table 19) and Theo (Olivero, Bad Samaritan)- are winners of previous escape room challenges. Together, they have to think their way out of deadly escape rooms designed to look like a bank lobby, a picturesque beach, a NYC street and a child\u2019s bedroom. Naturally, some will not make it out alive.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Does anybody mind if I dispense with all the usual ado and get right to the point? I like Escape Room: Tournament of Champions<\/strong>. It\u2019s as good as the first one in my not at all humble opinion. It\u2019s surprisingly clever for an inherently silly movie. It doesn\u2019t just rehash the first movie; it ultimately builds on it by introducing conspiracy into the mix. This is NOT a spoiler! Haven\u2019t we learned by now that anytime a mysterious corporation is involved, there\u2019s always conspiracy afoot? This might be a SPOILER<\/strong>. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions<\/strong> just scratches the surface of this notion. There is more story to tell; a third movie is all but guaranteed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting is about what you\u2019d expect. Russell makes an appealing heroine, one whose confidence has increased since we last saw her. Ben has his act a little more together this time out. He\u2019s sober and not as much of an a**hole. This is pretty much it for character development. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions <\/strong>doesn\u2019t waste time on exposition; the characters are little more than pieces on a giant playing board. Each one has a defining trait (e.g. inability to feel physical pain) rather than a personality. One isn\u2019t around long enough to even bother learning his\/her name. As such, we\u2019re not all that emotionally invested in them. Then again, how much did we really know about the many victims of Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The escape rooms in Escape Room: Tournament of Champions<\/strong> are a lot cooler than the traps in the most recent Saw movie. It\u2019s tense watching the players try to find all the clues while time runs out. At the same time, the movie is fairly predictable. There\u2019s never any doubt who will make it out of the rooms and who won\u2019t. There\u2019s also a plot twist that isn\u2019t so surprising if you think about it. It helps that Robitel kicks things off with a quick recap of the first movie before continuing the story. It looks to me like they\u2019re setting up a Saw-like franchise that will yield several installments. I can think of worse things than future Escape Room movies. If they\u2019re as much fun as Escape Room: Tournament of Champions<\/strong>, count me in each time.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Horror-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 88 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (violence, terror\/peril, strong language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Adam Robitel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch and Oren Uziel\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Carey and Brian Tyler\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Marc Spicer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: July 16, 2021 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Indya Moore, Holland Roden, Thomas Cocquerel, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9479,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Escape-Room-Tournament-of-C.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9195"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9481,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9195\/revisions\/9481"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}