Escape Room: Tournament of Champions – Film Review

Zoey Davis (Taylor Russell), Ben Miller (Logan Miller), and four other 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.

Since the release of Adam Robitel‘s Escape Room back in January of 2019, I have come around and changed my opinion of the film a little bit. Upon release, I found the film to be a convoluted and sometimes unintentionally hilarious attempt at trying to reinvent the decade-spanning and controversial Saw franchise but for a newer generation.

But I’ve gone ahead and watched the film about two more times since my initial review and you know what? It’s honestly a lot of fun. It’s by no means a great film but it’s really not all that bad. Taylor Russell does an excellent job as the protagonist (even if the others are sort of annoying) and the set pieces of all the film’s various escape rooms are highly impressive.

One thing that is still terrible about Escape Room to this day is its horribly unsatisfying ending that essentially says “Do you want a sequel? No? Yes? Well, either way, you’re getting one and you aren’t getting answers this time around!”. I was always perfectly fine with getting a sequel to that film, but I thought the way that the first film wrapped things up was straight-up embarrassing and jarring. One second, you think the ending feels right and natural and then the film adds one final scene that changes everything, and it’s not for the better.

Right from the opening of Robitel’s brand new follow-up Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, I got a terrible feeling in my stomach that it was going to be a trainwreck. The film’s first five minutes alone relied on flashbacks to the first entry so much to the point where it got seriously annoying. The opening wasn’t doing anything for me and I was getting worried that it was going to be a highly boring and uneventful movie.

Keep in mind – this film is only eighty-eight minutes in length and that’s including credits. Thankfully though, at around the twenty-minute mark, the film seriously kicks into gear as soon as returning protagonists Zoey Davis and Ben Miller enter a dangerous subway station. From that point onward, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions becomes a shockingly intense and relentlessly paced horror-thriller that never skimps out on the fun. As a matter of fact, I like it quite a bit more than the original – a movie I have since come to appreciate.

The escape rooms that were depicted the first time around were all incredibly impressive and they were easily my favorite aspect of that movie – the opening boiler office room and the upside-down bar being my two favorites. Surprisingly enough, this sequel has even more remarkable set pieces. Two sequences involving a bank and a beach, in particular, being incredibly fun to watch.

This film’s many screenwriters ensure that there is always a sense of danger present in virtually every single scene. In fact, after that twenty-minute mark, there wasn’t a single scene that was boring or uneventful. I loved how this movie didn’t waste any time getting to the nitty-gritty. The screenwriters knew that we, the viewer, wanted to see a bunch of strangers desperately clawing their way out of increasingly crazy escape rooms and they certainly deliver on that promise.

I’m genuinely surprised by just how intense and suspenseful Tournament of Champions can be at times. There is always a sense of palpable tension present throughout every scene and it truly never lets up. The only release you’ll ever get is whenever the credits begin to roll. Up until then, it’s essentially a non-stop exercise of tension.

It’s also nice to see Taylor Russell and Logan Miller returning for this sequel because they were easily my two favorite actors from the first installment as well. They don’t deliver Oscar-worthy performances or anything like that, but for the characters that they are trying to portray in the script that they are given, they certainly do a great job.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions isn’t going to be the next great horror film and it doesn’t have the best writing you will ever see. What it does have, however, are incredible set pieces, a sense of palpable tension, and a few surprises at the end. Although the future of this series is unclear at the moment, I can only hope that we will get several more of these.

Overall Grade: B+

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence, terror/peril, and strong language

Cast: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Thomas Cocquerel, Holland Roden, Indya Moore, Carlito Olivero

Directed by: Adam Robitel

Written by: Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch, Oren Uziel

Distributed by: Sony Pictures Releasing

Release Date: July 16, 2021

Running Time: 88 minutes