When it comes to horror movies, if you can’t frighten your audience with good scares, then you’ve got to gross them out with lots of blood and gore. Too many movies go for the latter and end up creating an experience that tends to only make you feel squeamish by the end of it all, rather than giving you anything to be truly terrified about.
New horror film No Escape appears to be taking a few pages from the gory playbook, It takes the concept of 2019’s clever Escape Room, which followed a group of people stuck in a series of Escape Rooms where their lives were at stake, and throws in a large dosage of torture porn straight out of Saw to make the whole experience feel even more uncomfortable.
No Escape is directed by Will Wernick, who strangely also directed a different Escape Room film back in 2017. This time, his movie follows a group of friends participating in what they think is a fun evening of puzzle-solving only to find themselves involved in a legitimately terrifying situation. Queue blood, death and a preposterous plot, and you can just imagine how it’s going to look in the trailer below:
A social media personality travels with his friends to Moscow to capture new content for his successful VLOG. Always pushing the limits and catering to a growing audience, they enter a cold world of mystery, excess, and danger
I really loved the whole concept of Escape Room and the idea of people working through clever puzzles to get themselves out of their predicament. Especially when those puzzles deliberate point to details of their lives and a big air of mystery that keeps you trying to see if you can figure it all out before the characters do. This movie however, has far poorer production values and puzzles that seem a little less innovative. It all feels far too formulaic for my liking.
No Escape stars Keegan Allen, Holland Roden and Ronen Rubinstein and is set for release in the US next month. There are no details on a local release just yet.
Last Updated: August 17, 2020
