Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
Director: Adam Robitel
Writer: Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch, Oren Uziel
Sequel to: Escape Room
Cast: Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Thomas Cocquerel, Holland Roden, Indya Moore, Carlito Olivero, Jay Ellis, Tyler Labine, Nik Dodani, Yorick van Wageningen, Isabelle Fuhrman, James Frain
Seen on: 18.7.2023

Plot:
Ever since Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) escaped the deadly escape room, Zoey has been trying to figure out who was behind that game in the first place. She finally gets a lead that could be the break she needed. She takes Ben to New York – only to find that the two of them in addition to Nathan (Thomas Cocquerel), Brianna (Indya Moore), Rachel (Holland Roden) and Theo (Carlito Oliveiro) are trapped in yet another round of the game – a game they all won before.

I didn’t like the first Escape Room movie a whole lot, but was in the mood for watching the sequel anyway. And Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is the rare case where the sequel is better than the first film, although that doesn’t mean you should get overly excited about it. It’s still just okay.

The big advantage that Escape Room: Tournament of Champions has over Escape Room is that its characters and their motivations are just much livelier and urgent than they were in the first film. Since they are all survivors of the games, roped back in (hat tip to the Hunger Games here), they know about the stakes, and they know what they are willing to do to survive. This fact alone already gives the film more tension than the first installment.

The characters are not necessarily better developed, nor does the plot make all that much sense if you think about it for more than a few seconds. But that’s not the point anyway: the point is the feeling of paranoia that comes with the seemingly all-powerful and omniscient Minos organization that orchestrates the games. The horror that lies in that is captured in the trauma of the survivors.

But the puzzles and the decision making involved in the puzzles are only semi-engaging and often feel like dragging things out way more than would have been necessary. While I wasn’t bored (as I was during the first film), I did wish for the pacing to be a little better overall. The film should have felt shorter.

Still, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is entertaining enough. You probably don’t even need to watch the first one to make sense of this one. That’s what I’d recommend you do anyway if you are interested in watching it. But honestly, you won’t be missing much if you don’t watch it.

Summarizing: okay.