Short version: The movie is boring for more "experienced" movie goers, but might be somewhat entertaining to easily entertained or startled people. Don't expect anything special tho.

Escape Room (2017) starts out as a pretty interesting movie; two Arabic looking guys are in a desert burying a mysterious box... and then they die. Followed by a long ass intro. Movies really need to stop doing this. The movie then shifts from the desert to an urban looking environment. We get introduced to the first two characters in the movie and from that point on you can tell how high the level of acting in this movie is going to be. 

Around the 11 minute mark there is a cheap jump scare attempt that adds nothing to the movie at all and wont scare anyone because it isn't scary. Around this time I also realized how low the color saturation for this movie was. The main character then goes into this creepy looking store looking for authentic stuff. The lady who owns the store is trying to be all mysterious and vague about the authentic stuff in her store but honestly comes off as freaking weird and I just want to slap her silly. The guy then explains that he owns an escape room and wants to have special stuff to be different~ from the competition. His eye falls on an item behind the lady. It is the mysterious box we saw the two Arabic dudes burying in the desert. A scene follows where the guy is literally eye fucking the box, and obviously wants it really, really badly. The lady starts talking about the "history" of the box and tells us its very, very original name: *･ﾟ☆THE SKULL BOX☆ﾟ･*. And at this point in the movie I got annoyed and confused:

So, this lady starts talking how evil this box is and that you can’t open it and she wants to keep it save, right? Then why does she literally have the box standing on a table behind her?!?!? Anyone has access to it!!! She could maybe bump into it one day and the box opens and then what? Shouldn’t she keep it somewhere save? Even if she thinks it's unnecessary to keep it safe, why is she telling him all about this box? Why doesn’t she just say “hey hi yea this is a family heirloom wont sell this sorry”. Instead she spills all its secrets!! All I could think was “bitch why you tell him about the box?”.

The shop owner lady then conveniently gets a phone call so she walks away from the box, she picks up the phone and she starts quoting the Gremlins movie?? I still don’t know what that was about. It wasn’t witty or cute, it was goddamn confusing. When she walks back to the counter the dude obviously stole the box. I mean… really? We then get introduced to the other characters in this movie (a group of 4 friends) and I was hoping that they would be a bit more decent when it comes to acting but I was genuinely disappointed. And then the movie honestly falls apart. Barely halfway in and I couldn’t be more bored; You know the acting is never going to get better, the only interesting thing was the box which we already know everything about now, and we know these 4 friends are going to be locked into an escape room with the box. It can’t get more predictable than that.

Once they have entered the escape room nothing happens. They try to solve puzzles but this one girl keeps complaining how bored she is. And then when the first guy dies the movie is literally about 3 people, a dead guy, and an evil guy being stuck in a room. That’s it. They aren’t doing anything. They are just there and it isn’t scary. Yeah, the bad guy looks kinda creepy, and he is supposed to be a demon or something, but he doesn’t give off any demon vibes. The only thing I’m scared off are the scissors he is holding most of the movie.

Escape Room felt like a waste of time. There were no good moments except for the desert intro which honestly kind of reminded me of Jumanji (1995). The concept of Escape Room was interesting, but the story sucked and it was also poorly executed. This movie should’ve taken notes from movies like Exam (2009) and Buried (2010) where the characters are also stuck in the same “room” the entire time. In the movie Exam the room has different elements and the characters have depth. In the movie Buried you are constantly on the edge of your seat because of all the different variables that can prevent the main character from ever getting out alive. In Escape Room you have nothing, just people in a room freaking out.

2 out of 10 stars**