Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions (2021) - Movie Review

I should mention right at the start that I’ll be looking at the Extended Cut, which has a completely different opening and ending to the theatrical release. Since they were both the same price for rental at the time of viewing, and this year has already proven me wrong on at least one other director’s cut, I figured I might as well check out the Extended Cut. Put simply, the key difference here has to do with the characters behind the scenes for the titular Escape Rooms, namely James Frain as the puzzlemaker for the shadowy Minos corporation, and Isabelle Fuhrman of Orphan fame as his captive daughter. I’m admittedly going off of plot synopses to parse out the differences between versions, but given the information available, I honestly think the changes made were for the better. Partly because they maintain a personalised touch to all of the escape rooms shown in the main film, and partly because any excuse to have Fuhrman on-screen is worth pursuing.

Now, as much as I could extoll how compelling the story of Fuhrman’s Claire is, her connection to the escape rooms, and how she adds to the overall theme of banding together to survive (as opposed to the ‘sole survivor’ theme of the first film), that would all fly in the face of how this is still a very niche thriller for a very specific kind of audience. And those who fall outside of that definition won’t care a whiff for the extra fluff if they aren’t already on-board for the patently ludicrous puzzle design and breakneck pace, the bulk of which remains identical regardless of the version seen.

Escape Room (2019) - Movie Review

Well, it’s February and you know what that means: Horror movies. No, I didn’t just suffer a stroke; it’s just that the start of the year is usually when studios dump off the movies that weren’t good enough for release the previous year, and horror movies are nothing if not plentiful regardless of the time of year. Knowing that off-season horror fare usually isn’t worth writing home about (we’ll ignore the irony that I do that for literally every new film I see), I can’t say I was expecting much from this. Hell, between director Adam Robitel, whose last film was pretty plain in the visual department, and writers whose best-known work between them is an early-2010’s Nicolas Cage flick, there’s not much reason to expect more than mediocrity here. Well, thankfully, this film does have quite a bit going for it. And it even manages to achieve some of it.

Love, Simon (2018) - Movie Review

 

I’m quite thankful that I grew up in the generation that I did. One where not being straight isn’t seen as much as a taboo as it once was. Oh sure, discrimination persists as it does for pretty much anything that isn’t the norm, but when I came out as bisexual at my high school formal (in response to a gay joke, no less), words cannot express how happy I was that went over as well as it did. It remains one of my few memories from that time that I wholeheartedly cherish.

But even with that said, no matter how much acceptance there is in society for such things, it still feels like a secret that needs to be divulged. "Coming out" is still treated as more of an event than anything to do with heterosexuality, and at a time like high school where one is still trying to figure out what their identity even is, that event can feel terrifying. Even when dealing with people who you know in your heart of hearts would welcome it.

Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse (2015) - Movie Review

No matter how menacing, influential or popular a creature is, there will always come a time when they will officially stop being scary. We’ve seen it happen with vampires and werewolves and now, with how obnoxiously prevalent they are, zombies have joined them. Of course, this doesn’t mean that they can’t be used in stories anymore; just that the method has to be tweaked ever so slightly. Where vampires and werewolves used to be monstrous creatures of the night, they have now become more humanised and treated with the character in mind more than previously. Zombies, on the other hand, are pretty much reduced to being scenery. They are nameless, faceless cannon fodder that the audience can feel guiltless for seeing killed off in bloody fashion, all the while mainly contributing the setting for a story. Hell, the most popular zombie-related media right now, The Walking Dead, is far less about the zombies themselves and more about their presence and prevalence affects the few human survivors and how they interact and conflict with each other. What I’m getting at with all this is, even with my own still-lingering affinity for the genre, I’m not expecting too much from today’s film.