Escape Room-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

PLOT SUMMARY: Six strangers are invited to participate in an Escape Room with the promise of $10,000. What they don't know is that the risks are real and losing a game means losing your life. 

We all like puzzles, don’t we? Riddles, brainteasers, anything that keeps our mind stimulated.

There are plenty of popular games that we download and play because winning them makes us feel smart.

Now imagine getting paid to play these games. Pretty cool, huh? $10,000 is a pretty sweet sum to play a couple of games.

Now, wait. There’s a small catch. You may just lose your life if you don’t win a puzzle.

Still, want to play games?

Escape Room is basically a giant real-life puzzle. You have to use your wits and intelligence to survive.

At first glance, even the characters believe they are in a safe zone. They are shown risks, but they assume that no one will actually get hurt because, surely, the company that created these games won’t risk a lawsuit.

Except they simply don’t care. The mysterious game master wants nothing better to do than to show games to his elite clients and have them gamble on who will survive.

ESCAPE ROOM Movie Plot 

In the first scene, we see Ben trying to escape a puzzle only to have the walls close in on him.

We are taken back to three days earlier, where a very timid girl, Zoey, is trying to speak up in her class but at the last second gives in to her fright.

On the other side, Ben is stuck in a dead-end job and frustrated.

We see Jason, successful at his job and who is his clients wrapped around his finger.

That night, the three of them are given a puzzle box to solve which they manage to do so.

It is an invitation to the Escape Room and a promise of $10,000 if they can escape.

They jump at that chance and meet each other and three more: Amanda, Mike and Danny.

The six get talking and it was a little refreshing to see them all get-together and work on the puzzles as a team. Maybe because it wasn’t a competition?

The six soon realize the waiting room is a puzzle. Basically, the room will be set on fire if they don’t find the key.

They all work together on the puzzles and the teamwork is interesting to watch. In just a few moments, the six have formed a connection where they genuinely care about each other.

The six manage to escape the room that is quickly turning into a furnace. They have removed their jackets to avoid feeling overheated.

They escape but find themselves in another puzzle. This time it is freezing cold and there is only one winter coat to keep them warm.

Amanda, a war veteran, decides they should all use it one by one and since Zoey is the youngest, gives it to her first.

Fortunately, Zoey is smart and finds a clue to get out of this room before they all freeze to death. However, before they can do so, Danny falls through the ice.

The five are unable to save him and he drowns. They now know the game is serious and their life is in danger.

Jason asks for the jacket and Zoey gives it to him. They all sit around an ice block that has the key and by night, hypothermia has set in and they all start to freak.

The ice melts and they retrieve the key. But the door doesn’t open and the group just about makes it to another door just as the ice collapses around them.

They now find themselves in an upside-down bar. There is a safe that they think has the key in it. Zoey finds a giant sliding puzzle which she thinks when solved will provide the safe combination.

Like the previous games, this one too is perilous. One by one, parts of the floor collapse. Zoey realizes that since the room in inverted, so would the code. Amanda opens the safe and finds an eight ball. However, with the floor gone, she can no longer make it safely back tote group. She throws the group the ball and falls down to her death.

The remaining enter the next room which is a hospital ward. There they all find their individual files as well as those of the two who had died.

Zoey was the only survivor of a plane crash.

Jason was the only survivor of a boating accident. Ben was the sole survivor of a car accident. He had been driving drunk with his friends. Mike was the lone survivor of a mining accident.

Amanda was the only survivor of a bomb attack. Danny was the only survivor of a carbon monoxide poisoning.

Zoey realizes that they were each chosen for a reason to find out who was the luckiest survivor of them all.

A screen comes on and announces they have five minutes to live. Poisonous gas emits through the vents.

Zoey starts breaking the cameras, sure that the only way to survive is by not playing the game any more.

Jason thinks using the defibrillator on Mike and bringing his heart rate up will open the door. Mike agrees but Jason uses it twice, causing Mike’s death.

Jason uses the ECG machine on himself and brings down his heart rate so that there is levelling and the door opens.

Zoey doesn’t follow Ben and Jason to the next room and collapses as she breathes in too much poisonous gas.

ESCAPE ROOM Ending Explained with spoilers! 

In the next room, Jason and Ben breathe in a hallucinogenic gas. Ben accuses Jason of killing Mike. Then realizes that Jason’s survival in the boating accident wasn’t luck. He had killed his friend for the jacket.

The two men brawl and Jason is killed. Ben moves on to the next room which is the one we had seen in the beginning.

Meanwhile, people in Hazmat suits enter the hospital ward room to retrieve Zoey’s corpse. Except, she is alive, using an oxygen mask and breathing in through the openings of the broken cameras.

She attacks the hazmat people and escapes.

Ben finds himself in another room after barely managing to escape the room. He meets the game master who tries to strangle him as he wants no survivors who will tell the outside world of their sick games.

Zoey arrives just in time and the game master is killed.

Zoey and Ben escape and are treated for their injuries. The police don’t find anything at the location of the puzzles and Zoey realizes whoever is behind the sick games is still alive.

Six months later, Ben is finally content with his job after a promotion but Zoey is stuck up on what happened to them especially after finding articles on the others who perished in the escape room. Their bodies were dumped in separate locations and made to look like accidents.

Zoey wants to travel to New York and go after the people responsible for all her trauma and the friends she lost. Ben reluctantly agrees.

The game master, though, has already created a simulation for her flight. The chance of her surviving is just 4%.

Will she survive? We have to wait for the sequel to find out.

Escape Room is definitely a thrilling movie. The characters are likeable and their bond, though quick, was interesting. It’s always nice to see people helping each other.

Okay, so yes, Jason wasn’t exactly helpful and was looking after his own interests, but it was wholesome to watch Amanda sacrificing her life to help the others.

The puzzles were challenging and the story fast-paced. The theme could definitely become a successful franchise that kind of has similarities with the SAW franchise.

Scare scale: 4/5