Film Review: Escape Room

"You Wanna Control Your Life. But Life Isn't A Science Experiment..."

With the beginning of 2019 primarily loaded with non-fictional dramatic adaptations and Oscar bait, the chance to take a reasonable comfort break from reality and back into the realm of mindless fictional horror comes around this week in the form of Escape Room, a strange oddity of a film which attempts to blend a whole catalogue of inspirations for a cinematic cocktail which seems neither good or awful, instead falling into that forgettable pot of big screen mediocrity which many horror pictures can unfortunately succumb to. Directed by horror genre stalwart, Adam Robitel, whose previous credits include the likes of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension and Insidious: The Last Key, Escape Room states to have a screenplay from the minds of both Bragi F. Schut and Maria Melnik, but with so many glaring cliches at the heart of the action, one could argue that any cinephile with a faint knowledge of horror could have supplied the script at the heart of a film which somewhat revels knowingly at the fact that every single narrative turn seems to feature one cinematic rip off after cinematic rip off, and whilst Escape Room clearly fails to bring anything fresh or original to the genre in which it sits, Robitel's latest is still a functional and partially entertaining high concept B-Movie with enough lavish silliness to make you just laugh at the absurdity of it all. 

Amidst the tick list of the many cinematic "inspirations" present within the narrative, Escape Room comes across as a oddball hybrid of Saw, Hellraiser and the morbidly overlooked Cube, just without the jaw-dropping exploitation violence which made each so memorable first time around. Beginning by placing all the chess pieces into position as we our introduced to an array of underwhelming and underdeveloped lead characters, the action predominantly follows Taylor Russell's (Lost in Space) Zoey, a timid and whispering scientific genius who after receiving a strange, indecipherable lock box, takes up the opportunity from the shadowy "Gamemaster" to solve his own personal "Escape Room" and the chance of winning ten thousand dollars. Cue absolutely ridiculous and impractical escape scenarios, shouty, swearing, panicky characters and of course, cringe inducing dialogue which includes each and every character reading out even the most minor part of the plot in case the audience member at the back of the screening just happened to miss it, Escape Room seems to revel in its' unashamedly low budget nature, resulting in a sense that although the many weaknesses are as clear as day, the more silly the narrative gets, the more downright enjoyable the action ultimately becomes. With Deborah Ann Woll undoubtedly supplying the best performance of the bunch, continuing her excellent dramatic chops seen most clearly in Netflix's Daredevil, Escape Room is an utter shambles and a complete mess, but with enough standout ripeness and a more than favourable runtime, Robitel's latest is actually quite fun and at least made me leave the cinema with a questionable smirk.

Overall Score: 5/10 

Film Review: Insidious: The Last Key

"I've Faced Many Evil's In My Life. This One Is Different Though..."

Acting as the latest entry within the ongoing Blumhouse Production line of horror releases, Insidious: The Last Key, the fourth and supposedly final picture within the rather drawn out Insidious franchise, is the first big screen jump-fest to hit multiplexes this year, and whilst there is a lack of consideration, particularly from myself, in regards to why yet another sequel is necessary to a franchise which suffers from a bruising sense of unmemorability, aside from its' rather creepy first entry back in 2010, The Last Key is a somewhat acceptable, time-passing affair. Directed by horror stalwart Adam Robitel, whose previous releases in the form of The Taking of Deborah Logan and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension acts as confident evidence for his directorial appointment, The Last Key primarily focuses on Lin Shaye's psychic ghost hunter, Elise Rainier, as she returns to face the fears of her childhood in order to help Kirk Acevedo's Ted Garza who calls for aid after experiencing strange hauntings within the house Rainier and her long lost brother grew up in under the watchful eye of their monstrous father. 

Suffering in a way which most contemporary horror sequels, prequels and spin-offs ultimately do by feeling just a little bit worse for wear in terms of the freshness of the narrative and overall surprise factor, Robitel's movie ironically begins in impressive fashion, heading further back in time to explore Rainier's childhood in order to lay the groundwork for the story ahead, and with two mightily timed jump scares to start off proceedings, The Last Key was in danger of becoming much better than one might have expected. Unfortunately, yet not exactly surprisingly, however, the swift move back to the somewhat present day then brings about the middling return to a horror blueprint which covers everything from screaming dead entities to an overkill sensibility regarding the use of cliched horror tropes, tropes which become tiring as they finalise by simply resorting each and every time to the cattle prod horror cinema audiences seem to lap up. With comedy which doesn't always work coming from the Chuckle Brothers of horror in the form of Rainier's bumbling assistants and a concluding reveal which is unsurprising and hokey, The Last Key is pretty much your substandard horror sequel, but for the impressive first ten minutes, a committed performance from Shaye and a sense that finally the series has been put to bed, Robitel's movie isn't a classic but it at least works in a audience pleasing kind of fashion which for many, is all that you need. 

Overall Score: 5/10