The entire existence of Escape Room is a weird meta exercise in time being a flat circle. Without films like Saw, Cube, Exam, Fermat’s Room, and a variety of other trapped-in-a-room films, the contemporary craze of escape rooms would likely not exist. And now we have a film which takes that craze and uses it as a set-up to create a film in the mold of those which inspired the trend. In that way, watching Escape Room is kind of like being in one of the titular attractions if the one you chose was themed entirely around ’00s locked room movies.
Adam Robitel’s PG-13 thriller is certainly not an original film, but it is relatively entertaining and will likely be most enjoyable to the pre-teens who the film is clearly aimed at. One of the film’s biggest missteps comes right at the beginning with a completely unnecessary in medias res opening. It sucks some of the joy out of the film and doesn’t fulfill its clear goal of trying to trick the audience into thinking they know the sole survivor whilst still managing to reveal far too much. But the one positive is a very obvious Cube nod as the puzzle at the center of the sequence looks just like one of the lit panels that make up the trap from the iconic low budget indie chiller.
Source: IGN.com Escape Room Review