As seems apt for a second entry of a B-level franchise, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions begins in a “last week on …” style befitting of episodic TV. And immediately, the 2019 sleeper hit‘s two survivors, Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller), track the coordinates of the Minos Corporation, the shady outfit behind the invitation-only attraction that tried to straight up murder them, to Manhattan.
Lest you worry your sequel steeps itself in a mudheap o’ mythology, fear not! Like its predecessor, Tournament of Champions is almost solely a series of for-keeps games with true life-or-death stakes. We get a few rounds of electric hangman in a subway car, a cityscape with acid rain, a faux beach that’s actually a giant hourglass and a bank lobby equipped with criss-crossing laser beams. (Regarding that last one, where are Catherine Zeta-Jones and Vincent Cassel when we need them most?)
Each scenario plays out like puzzle pages torn from a Final Destination-themed workbook. Returning writer/director Adam Robitel again has his stock characters somehow solve incredibly cryptic clues under incredibly stressful timelines, so prepare for a lot of this:
Person A: “Time’s running out, hurry!”
Person B: “I found something! What can this mean?”
Person A: “I dunno, but — oh, look your flop sweat dropped on it and revealed an image of a bird and you’re from Boston so maybe it means Larry Byrd of the Boston Celtics? And he spells his name with a ‘Y,’ right? And ‘Y’ is the 25th letter in the alphabet and-and-and is anyone here 25? No? Oh, snap, we’re surrounded by mirrors, so maybejustmaybe it’s really 52! Who here is — what, Jan, you? You’re 52? That’s it, that’s it! Caw-caw, Jan! Caw-caw like the wind!”
Had the movie not racked up a body count, I may not in such a forgiving mood over their deduction powers that take Sherlock Holmes to the nth degree. But it does; therefore, I am. —Rod Lott