Starring Taylor Russell, Logan Miller

Directed by Adam Robitel

Sony, out now

 

Zoey and Ben decide to tackle Minos in its lair…

At the dawn of 2021 I waxed lyrical about that B-Moviest of B-Movies that was Escape Room, then sadly confined to – and unable to escape from – the streaming platform Netflix.

See what I did there?

With Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, now on general release, we’re back with more of the same. The film has had a bit of a drubbing from some quarters for being too much of the same, but my goodness if you’re going to be the same as something then be the same as the very good thing you did before. Indeed, I refer the reader to that original review because, frankly, pretty much all of the same things apply.

Having said that, I think knocking the movie for being overly repetitive is a tad unfair. It’s Puzzle Horror, so the format needs to stay broadly the same – that’s the point – contestants playing to the death as they fight to survive a series of fiendishly constructed escape rooms – and director Adam Robitel has stuck to the Ronseal integrity of his original, adding some nice new twists and character developments to make the sequel worthwhile.

I’m also forgiving of any sense of over familiarity because I love the visual style of these films and meticulous way Robitel uses set design and art direction as fundamental to his story telling. It’s a good-looking movie and perhaps I was more than happy for it to sing the same song as the first film just to be soaking it all in on a big screen.

Verdict: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions isn’t going to shake your world, but it does what it does with confidence and aplomb. It’s a crisp 88 popcorn-crunching minutes and satisfyingly tense without being gratuitously gory. That’ll do for me. 8/10

Martin Jameson