When the first Escape Room came out at the start of 2019, it blatantly cashed in on the pre-Pandemic escape room craze by turning them into a house of horrors. Though I initially thought the film lacked pretty much everything to be memorable or remotely good, I’ve kind of come around to it. Not to the point where its franchise aspirations or lack of great thrills make it a great movie, but its concept led to some awesomely designed sequences and it’s kind of cool that the story itself is designed like a giant puzzle that fits its characters’ stories together to create a bigger picture.
Its sequel, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, however, is just a reminder of the original’s shortcomings. It simply follows the formula that its R-rated equivalents, Cube, Saw, and Final Destination, generally take with its sequels: expand the gimmicks first, figure out story and characters later.
Like Saw’s traps, Final Destination’s drawn out death scenes, and Cube’s craziness, Tournament of Champions clearly knows what people remembered about the first movie, because the escape rooms are vastly expanded in scale and insanity. Although the rooms don’t have personal ties to its group of survivors like the first film, the sheer scale and convolutedness of these traps feels fitting for a true “tournament of champions.” Just when you think that the group has the answer that’ll allow them to escape, there are ten more steps hidden in plain sight and it speaks to the film’s greater complexity and focus on creating more engaging room sequences. It definitely pays off since the rooms are once again the most compelling part and director Adam Robitel does a great job creating thrilling sequences within these themed rooms.
The opening room, with all the returning players, including Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) who we got to know in the last film, is really great, as it’s this slow-build introduction that quickly develops some suspenseful shocks. The second room has these strong, gripping moments that leave you on the edge of your seat, as one character puts the entire group in jeopardy by letting faith drive them. There’s even a very cool room that utilizes acid rain well to add in this timed urgency and feels like it’s ripped from Jigsaw’s idea journal—which is a big compliment. The escape rooms are still one of the best elements of this franchise, so it’s a shame though that this sequel couldn’t come with a great cast of characters or story.
The idea of having a bunch of champions/survivors come together leads to some interesting introductions, because the characters come off very capable since they already understand the situation they’re in. It’s not too long before they’re working together decently well and none of them ever come off completely useless. However, outside of Zoey and Ben, who have the advantage of being part of the last film, the rest of the characters are completely unmemorable. We get a few minor details about each, but it never makes you see any of them as more than just another addition to the kill count. They try to make Rachel (Holland Roden), a survivor with a condition where she can’t feel pain, seem like she’s going to have some big arc, but it ends up going nowhere.
The lack of character depth really takes away from the impact of this being a group of champions and maybe if the other characters were built up in previous films like Zoey and Ben are, the stakes could’ve felt higher and there could’ve been greater emotional attachment. Even the story as a whole just isn’t as special and the return of Russell and Miller isn’t utilized well. Like the first movie, each room in Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is another piece to the story puzzle that comes together in the final room. However, the story that unfolds here is just pointlessly dumb. The idea of Minos, the evil corporation behind everything, having a greater plan for Zoey because of her craftiness makes sense, but how they go about it is ridiculous. It attempts to create this great twist by bringing something back from the first movie, but in the moment, it feels forced and totally breaks the story’s momentum.
It’s even more frustrating that the film completely misses the opportunity to deliver a great end for Zoey’s story. From the start, it’s pretty obvious that Ben and Miller are just along for the ride, but Russell makes Zoey on a mission for a vengeance that initially drives the story well. However, by the end, as things are seemingly resolved, the film doesn’t take a great opportunity to make Zoey’s story about the trauma she’s faced in fighting Minos. There’s a very interesting moment at the beginning with Zoey talking to a therapist about how she is now always looking for clues because she can’t escape the trauma of what happened to her. The potential for this trauma to have come out in the film’s final moments would’ve left things on an emotional level that speaks to all of dangers and death that Zoey’s faced. It could’ve been a sad, but compelling arc for her survivor story. However, the film dashes all hope of that potential with a false ending that’s just more unremarkable sequel bait.
Along with not learning from its mistakes, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions just can’t live up to its potential and lets the nicely designed escape rooms drive the film but doesn’t give the strong character or story support to get very far or go anywhere special.
