ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS (2021)

Studio:     Columbia Pictures
Director:    Adam Robitel
Writer:     Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch, Oren Uziel, Christine Lavaf, Fritz Bohm
Producer:  Neal H. Moritz
Stars:     Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Indya Moore, Holland Roden, Thomas Cocquerel, Carlito Olivero, Isabelle Fuhrman, James Frain

Review Score:

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Summary:

Survivors of previous escape rooms designed by a mysterious puzzle master once again find themselves forced to survive a deadly series of elaborate traps and riddles.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

EXTENDED CUT: In 2003, Sonya threatens to leave her husband Henry and take their daughter Claire with her due to Henry’s apparent obsession with being the puzzle maker for Minos Escape Rooms. Later that night, Sonya dies when she fails to solve a puzzle to escape a trap planted in her shower.

EXTENDED CUT: In the present day, Henry oversees simulation tests on an airplane escape room being created for previous survivor Zoey Davis. Meanwhile, Henry’s daughter Claire designs escape rooms based on memories and mementos of her mother while being held captive by Henry. Claire angrily tells her father he should design the puzzles himself instead of obsessing over finding a way to kill Zoey, who Henry worries can expose them.

EXTENDED CUT: Accompanied by fellow survivor and new best friend Ben Miller, Zoey plans to fly to New York City to investigate a coded address for Minos. Due to her fear of flying related to her mother’s death however, Zoey is unable to board the plane.

THEATRICAL CUT: Zoey recounts her harrowing escape room experience during a therapy session with Dr. Simms. Zoey specifically recalls how Amanda Harper, a fellow participant who seemingly fell to her death, spoke fondly about her relationship with her daughter.

THEATRICAL CUT: Skeptical of Zoey’s story, Dr. Simms points out how Zoey thinks she is still playing the game and believes everything around her is a possible clue. Dr. Simms recommends that Zoey finally take the trip to New York with Ben that she repeatedly postpones, but Zoey decides to drive instead.

After traveling by car, Zoey and Ben arrive in New York only to find an abandoned building at the coded address. A junkie suddenly steals a compass pendant that belonged to Zoey’s mother. Zoey and Ben chase the junkie into the subway, where they are tricked into boarding a train.

The subway car is revealed to be another Minos escape room when it uncouples from the speeding train and subsequently crashes at the end of a tunnel in an abandoned station. Upon commiserating, Zoey, Ben, and fellow passengers Theo, Nate, Brianna Collier, and Rachel Ellis realize they are all survivors of previous Minos escape room experiences.

The subway car becomes electrified. Theo dies by electrocution while the other five unwitting players solve a series of hectic Hangman puzzles that ultimately open a hatch into an elevator.

As the elevator descends, Zoey tries to deduce what patterns are present in the puzzle themes. Zoey and Ben recount how their first experience was tailored to sole survivors of tragedies. Brianna says her group consisted of social media influencers. Nate belonged to a group of priests having their faith tested. Later on, Rachel reveals her group was made up of people unable to feel physical pain.

Zoey, Ben, Rachel, Brianna, and Nate exit the elevator into an underground bank decorated in an art deco style. Using keys found inside lollipops and safety deposit box codes, the five of them solve riddles to make their way across a tiled floor that triggers a deadly laser grid. Despite the danger, everyone eventually escapes through the vault.

The group enters a room designed to look like a beach. Quicksand swallows Nate when he risks his life to save Rachel. After frantically working with the women to find clues and solve more puzzles, the sand swallows Ben too.

Although Brianna escapes through a refrigerator passageway while Zoey and Rachel escape through a lighthouse, the three women regroup in a room made to look like a New York City street. The women work together to find clues while avoiding acid rain that falls at regular intervals. Zoey eventually makes it safely inside a taxicab, but Brianna and Rachel are locked outside where they seemingly melt to death in the last downpour. Zoey falls through a trapdoor in the cab.

EXTENDED CUT: Henry’s technical team detects a malfunction in a transition chute. Henry doesn’t recognize the final escape room when he sees it on a surveillance monitor. Henry learns the room’s most recent design changes were delivered on a suspicious flash drive. A technician recommends reporting the apparent breach, but Henry insists that their employers want them to continue no matter what.

EXTENDED CUT: With help from Ensler, a Minos henchman sympathetic to Claire’s captivity, Zoey recovers in the room where Henry keeps his daughter confined. Zoey sees Claire’s keepsakes and connects that the escape room clues were based on Claire’s mother Sonya. Zoey accuses Claire of being a murderer, but Claire insists that her father forced her to design the puzzles and her only way out of captivity was to gain Zoey’s trust, which Claire tries to do by showing that she secretly transported Ben to a room her father didn’t know about.

EXTENDED CUT: Henry’s henchmen find Ben. Henry then has Ben moved to another escape room that slowly fills with poison gas.

EXTENDED CUT: Claire explains that she can escape confinement with her cell’s passcode if she can solve her father’s puzzle. However, Henry taunted that she would never be able to do it on her own, which is why Claire needs help from someone as smart as Zoey. Zoey realizes she can see additional clues from a perspective Claire can’t see from her cell. The two women solve a matching puzzle involving insects, elements, numbers, and Greek history. Claire uses the passcode to unlock her cell.

EXTENDED CUT: Henry shoots Ensler and confronts his daughter at gunpoint. Ensler still manages to fire a bullet into Henry from the ground. Claire then locks Henry in her former cell.

EXTENDED CUT: Claire and Zoey race to Henry’s study and use an override code on his computer to remotely rescue Ben. Claire explains that after Zoey survived, their clients begged for a tournament of champions as an encore. Henry had to let other people win their games because Zoey was the only person who ever beat them legitimately.

EXTENDED CUT: Claire tells Zoey that Ben is at the abandoned building where they started out in New York City. After claiming she will escape and call the police, Claire gives Zoey keys to a vehicle and sends her after Ben.

EXTENDED CUT: Zoey arrives at the abandoned building to find authorities processing the crime scene. Zoey reunites with Ben as he is brought to an ambulance. Ben gives Zoey her mother’s compass pendant, which Ensler returned to Ben after he was rescued from the quicksand trap.

EXTENDED CUT: Claire confronts her captive father. Flashbacks reveal Claire was actually a sociopathic genius whose disturbing behavior alarmed her mother. Sonya planned to have Claire committed for psychiatric treatment, so Claire killed her with the trap in 2003. Incensed at her father for stealing her ideas, Claire initiates a purge of oxygen in his cell.

THEATRICAL CUT: After falling through the cab floor, Zoey lands in a child’s room. Amanda Harper surprisingly falls out of a closet. Zoey connects that all of the puzzles were based around Amanda’s daughter Sonya. Amanda explains that when she fell in the previous escape room, she didn’t die. Rather, she was taken captive by Minos and blackmailed into helping design the next game under the threat of them killing her kidnapped daughter.

THEATRICAL CUT: Amanda warns that Minos is going to force Zoey to design their next game. Amanda also advises that if Zoey didn’t witness something firsthand, such as another participant dying, then it may not have actually happened.

THEATRICAL CUT: Zoey sees that Ben is still alive on the other side of a clear door. Zoey tears up an invitation to become the next puzzle maker. Ben’s room begins filling with water.

THEATRICAL CUT: Zoey sets her room on fire, which eventually causes the clear door to burst, freeing Ben. Zoey, Ben, and Amanda escape outside and seemingly go to the police.

THEATRICAL CUT: While recovering at the police station, a news broadcast reports that Zoey, Ben, and Amanda’s survival initiated an Interpol investigation into Minos. Special Agent Freddie Will apologizes for authorities not previously believing Zoey’s story. He goes on to say that because of Zoey and Ben’s actions, Minos was unable to hide the evidence this time, and the FBI is now conducting nationwide raids on their offices. The agent returns Zoey’s mother’s compass pendant.

THEATRICAL CUT: Ben agrees to fly home with Zoey. Once aboard, Zoey begins thinking that their escape was too easy. As various clues start coming together throughout the plane, Zoey realizes everything that happened after escaping with Amanda was another ruse and she and Ben are now trapped in an airplane escape room.

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Review:

Upon finishing the Theatrical Cut of “Escape Room: Tournament of Champions,” I settled on a 55/100 rating. I felt that safe score correctly categorized the movie as a slightly above average thriller thanks to sleek production design and energetic editing, but one that gets bogged down by ludicrous leaps in logic and too heavy of a reliance on hectic hullaballoo.

After watching the Extended Cut (well, watching the new footage and fast-forwarding through the rest), I was tempted to bump up the score a little bit. Not because I believe the Extended Cut is better. I don’t. I actually think “Escape Room: Tournament of Champions” is a rare example of a studio’s Theatrical Cut holding up as superior to a home video version that includes additional scenes or restores a director’s original vision. I wouldn’t rate the Extended Cut above 50/100, possibly not even that high, although either way it would result in a lower average overall.

Yet I wanted to give the whole shebang a green light because, no matter how poorly the two cuts may play on an individual basis, I wholeheartedly recommend “Escape Room: Tournament of Champions” as a two-film experience. Especially in this day and age of social media speculation going gaga whenever a project undergoes re-shoots and everyone wonders what that supposedly says about a movie’s quality, these two cuts of “Escape Room: Tournament of Champions” make for a fully fascinating watch purely from a filmmaking “what if?” perspective.

Before getting too far ahead, let’s clarify something about the Extended Cut. Specifically, how it’s misleading to even call it that.

“Escape Room 2’s” Extended Cut runs roughly eight minutes longer than the Theatrical Cut’s 82-minute (without end credits) duration. But it’s not eight more minutes of movie, which the word “Extended” implies. There’s an entirely new beginning running about 14 minutes in length and a drastically different 13-minute ending (more like most of the last act than just the ending). That comes out to 20-ish minutes of swapped scenes that completely change the film’s entire context.

“Alternate Cut” would have made more sense since these are two totally separate entities whose vastly different storylines cannot coexist. If “Escape Room 3” ever happens, one of these versions has to go out the window, presumably the Extended Cut as I’d assume whatever was publicly released in theaters would be considered canon for an ongoing mythology.

As far as either cut goes, “Escape Room: Tournament of Champions” requires suspension of disbelief on a scale like almost no other fantasy film has ever asked for. Harsher critics could contend that the fiction becomes so improbably outrageous, viewers are essentially required to stop thinking altogether, which is anathema to a plot premised around puzzle solving.

The setup sees previous survivor Zoey and her new buddy Ben unwittingly entering another Minos Corporation escape room after they’re tricked into boarding a New York City subway train. This time though, they’re forced to fight their way through consecutive death traps with four fellow survivors from other games that happened elsewhere. How did Minos lure each of these individual strangers into the exact same car at the exact same time with no innocent bystanders along for the ride? Uh yeah, those kinds of questions come up repeatedly as the story’s silliness explodes with the ferocity of The Big Bang, which is precisely why powering down your brain comes highly recommended.

The Theatrical Cut might be able to get away with retroactive reasoning that the other players were merely Minos plants all along. Perhaps that’s what a future installment will probably suggest. Without another viewing, I’m not sure if that explanation entirely pans out considering what takes place and how everyone behaves. But I’m not about to watch “Tournament of Champions” a third time to find out.

The filmmakers repeatedly employ the same tactic to distract their audience from laughing out loud at the ever-escalating lunacy. As the survivors move from rigged room to rigged room, usually with one fewer member each time, audiovisual assaults attack eyes and ears with rapid-fire riddles, characters constantly shouting, and a lot of folks running around at Road Runner speeds. There’s intensity to be found if you viscerally respond to frenetic action, yet this sort of suspense is far less satisfying on an intellectual engagement level.

“Escape Room: Tournament of Champions” would be much more fun if you could test your own deduction skills and go up against the clock to see what you can solve before the characters do. The problem is you can’t play along at home. Zoey’s group encounters more physical tasks than mental ones. The clues, which they burn through at lightning speed, are also often out of our eyesight. Either that or players possess bits of knowledge we aren’t privy to so they’ll have something sorted before passing their info along to us. This makes for a pretty passive viewing experience when an escape room, even a vicarious one, should be anything but.

Colorfully crisp style picks up some of the slack. What I planned to say after I had only seen the Theatrical Cut was that, like the first “Escape Room” (review here), this sequel only has minor appeal that falls well short of blockbuster franchise potential. Although for all their predictable trappings and overwritten implausibility, these movies still look slick and move smoothly. Fighting to find a simile, “Escape Room” movies are like popsicles in the summertime. Their familiar flavor tastes sweet and sugary while you’re eating it, but your memory immediately moves on as soon as it all melts away.

Having seen the Extended Cut’s relatively mundane alternative, I’m more inclined to extend open arms to the Theatrical Cut’s absurdity. The Extended Cut freely hands out more information, too much frankly, about what’s going on behind the scenes at Minos. Not only is that backstory barely intriguing, but the prologue removes much of the mystery by revealing who really pulls the puppet strings at the outset. Future callbacks are then put in plain view so you can figure out what connects the puzzles before Zoey does. Beyond being comparatively boring to the Theatrical Cut, the Extended Cut’s mythology gets backed into a narrative corner whereas the open-ended Theatrical Cut cleans the sandbox for future films to run wherever they wish.

At first, I felt like the Extended Cut should have just been deleted scene bonuses instead of being released as another version altogether. Now I think that revealing this other option may be an inadvertently smart way to prove “Escape Room” would be better off by getting as crazy as possible instead of staying grounded in remote reality like the Extended Cut attempts. These wildly different cuts also prove producers are just winging it, and don’t have a definitive direction in mind when it comes to the franchise’s future. But even though the movie itself might be “meh,” the two cuts together offer enjoyably enlightening insight into how creators can retrofit inconvenient developments by retooling a few scenes to be unbelievably bonkers.

Review Score: 55

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