We tell whether the film Escape Room: Tournament of Champions managed to replicate the success formula of the original.

On September 23, the film Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, a sequel to the hugely successful movie by Adam Robitel about clever kids trapped in a survival quest, hits theaters.

The ending of the original clearly hinted at a continuation, and now we will be told what happens to the heroes in their confrontation with the powerful organization behind these deadly games.

Tournament of Champions

Zoey and Ben, survivors of the deadly quest, head to New York to find evidence of the existence of the Minos organization. Instead, they once again become participants in intellectual survival games. This time, they are joined by other winners of similar quests.

Since the heroes have already faced something similar before, the action kicks off immediately — searching for clues, teamwork, instant tension (both literally and figuratively), inevitable deaths. But this time the stakes are higher, the quests are more complex (formally), and there is less time to solve the puzzles. Besides trying to survive, Zoey and Ben still attempt to learn more about Minos and expose them.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions honestly tries to capture the audience's attention from the first minutes and surprise with new unexpected quests. But not everything goes smoothly. The quests often feel contrived. Moreover, they clearly fall short of the inventiveness of analogues from the series or at least the original film. And the very idea of uniting winners of other games already feels stale. But the whole story is saved by one thing — the authors' self-irony.

Roman Kovalev

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Praise the authors for irony

Often such films lack a bit of humor to lighten the mood and say, "we understand everything, we're all here for fun," which the Scream series, for example, has always been great at. The creators of Escape Room: Tournament of Champions have succeeded a lot in this regard — there is a balance between tension within the quests and irony about everything happening. For instance, in one episode, the characters, laughing among themselves, suggest that "the exit will be through the refrigerator." And guess what? Right.

Another level of irony is that throughout the film, the viewer may feel that something is off, and the quests are completed too easily. And the creators have their own answer to that. Quite cheeky and straightforward, but why not?!

As a bonus to all the humor, the actress Holland Roden, who plays one of the central roles here, was previously seen in the film Escape Room: Quest in Moscow. Even though that work has nothing to do with Adam Robitel's duology, except for a similar localized title. Such funny coincidences happen due to our translators.

Is it worth watching Escape Room: Tournament of Champions?

In the end, it can be said that this is a dynamic, moderately tense, and purely entertaining youth horror with all the trimmings: questionable acting, silly dialogues, and an abundance of clichés. The situation is saved by humor, sometimes intentional, sometimes accidental. But that's how it is.

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