#ESCAPE ROOM TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS MOVIE#
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#ESCAPE ROOM TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS SERIES#

It’s the inverse of, for example, Saw V and the usual ‘it’s me or you’ torture porn movies Tournament of Champions is the cinematic embodiment of a group project, where everyone has to do their part for a good grade. Everybody, generally, gets along, laments the forces that are pitting them against one another, and realizes that ‘teamwork’ is the word.

#ESCAPE ROOM TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS MOVIE#

It’s a horror movie that’s based around a seldom explored question in movies of the same ilk: what if the characters, thrust into a game of life or death, actually liked and trusted one another? None of the six characters forced to take part in Minos’ next round of deadly escape rooms is detestable or serves as a circumstantial antagonist. There is little chance that Escape Room 2 will win over critics of the first film, and even genre die-hards may be put off by the film’s bloodless, toothless, PG-13 horror instincts, but it would also be unfair to use any of the film’s more pronounced flaws as a means to disregard its genuinely entertaining, occasionally subversive nature. The ‘tournament of champions’ commences, and this time Zoey doesn’t plan on playing by the Gamemaster’s rules it’s her prerogative to not only survive the game but take down Minos once and for all. The six contestants have all played the game before and were the sole survivors from their groups.

Traveling to New York City, the two fall into a trap that yet again places them right in the middle of Minos’ escape rooms, except this time they’re not playing the game with a group of newbies. The movie picks up with the two surviving escape room participants from the first movie, Taylor Russell’s Zoey and Logan Miller’s Ben, as they attempt to track down Minos, the evil company responsible for their traumatic experience.

The movie starts off with a one-minute sizzle reel of highlights from the first installment, to catch new viewers up, but it still largely expects viewers to be as knowledgeable of its premise and in love with its characters as it is. It’s the rare studio horror movie to strongly suggest that the viewer see the previous movie before seeing the new one. Tournament of Champions, equipped with a hugely sellable premise that would have lent itself to a ‘new cast of characters’ second installment, doesn’t hit the reset button it doesn’t even downplay the events of the first film.

#ESCAPE ROOM TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS SERIES#

Except it’s not because the two horror franchises have similar set-ups - put a group of unsuspecting, dynamic characters through a series of single room-based torture - it’s because both double down on their own mythology. With Tournament of Champions, the series earns its name’s utterance in the same sentence as the Saw franchise (a comparison which critics were eager to jump on back in 2019). If Escape Room’s goal was to get people in theaters based on their familiarity with the escape room experience, then Tournament of Champions is fully committed to getting butts in seats based on audiences’ familiarity with the budding franchise. And yet, at no point while watching the movie did any of that matter, or even occur, to me. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, the sequel to 2019’s surprise horror smash Escape Room, has the unfortunate assignment of existing in a world that is long past the escape room craze of the late-2010s - upon which the series had built its central gimmick.

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Remember escape rooms? In a post-Covid world, it’s easy to forget a time where being locked in a room full of strangers was the cornerstone for a fun night out, and not inherently a horror premise. In this installment, six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive…and discovering they’ve all played the game before. Starring Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Indya Moore, Thomas Cocquerel, Holland Roden, and Carlito Olivero. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, 2021.

Escape room tournament of champions