“Escape Room”: An Escape You May Have “Saw” Before

Escape Room’s fun is proportional to the joy and cleverness seen in its set design.

When the sets work like one of those find the hidden objects serial puzzles popular On Facebook, Escape Room is a moderately diverting thriller that invites audience participation. The more it diverts from that formula, and becomes a less gorier Saw wannabe, the more painfully generic it becomes to watch. When it goes sci-fi meta at the end, it completely derails.

All this gets evenly distributed in a 2:2:2 ratio between puzzles, Saw echoes and meta-eccentricities. Escape Room is the perfectly imperfect film to open the January dumping ground with. It teases the best but preps you for the worst.

There are no spoilers or surprises in Escape Room. Those you expect to be killed get it and the villains are what you always suspected them to be. There is no bad or good involved when your just average.