“Escape Room: Tournament of Champions” is a tricky sequel, starting with gauging just how successful it truly is. Like with the 2019 original, “Escape Room,” its hand-holding horror can be nifty and surprising, but it’s even less of a challenge to forget about as soon as it’s over.
The biggest mistake from returning director Adam Robitel and his fleet of writers, the true game-makers of this series, is in stepping away from the variety of the first film. The uniqueness gives these movies their particular rush, the way that characters can be suddenly transported from a location like an icy cold room to something as jarring as an upside-down dive bar. And in a larger sense, the freshness made the first movie exciting and impressive. To watch Robitel and his fellow game-makers legitimize the escape room concept, locking us into the perspective of its scared contestants, and in turn, challenge our notion of what blockbuster torture looks like. Instead, “Tournament of Champions” embodies how the promise of “more” can be limiting in terms of sequels. Robitel is sacrificing his edge and confidence as a storyteller to re-assert his craftsmanship.
With more writers (Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch, and Oren Uziel) and what looks like a bigger budget, “Tournament of Champions” goes back to the story of Taylor Russell’s Zoey, who helped beat an original game that included a melting-hot lounge, and a simulation of their previous near-death experiences. Survival has landed her in therapy, but it makes her want justice against the Minos group. This elusive force organized these deadly escape rooms for an unseen wealthy audience and seemed to be located in New York City (their group’s logo reveals coordinates, she realized at the end of the first film). Zoey brings along her new friend Ben (Logan Miller), who is loyal to her after saving his life.
Sure enough, while in New York City hoping to track down Minos and speak to their manager, Zoey and Ben find themselves in another escape room. The first one is a New York City subway car with a vicious lightning storm inside, and that’s where they meet other champions, who are just as upset they got suckered into another deadly game. The movie does not spend a good deal with backstory, as it had last time, and that proves to be for their benefit—it lets each spirited performance humanize the characters even more. Everyone is defined by the previous game they survived, like Indya Moore’s influencer Brianna, previous “pain freak” Rachel (Holland Roden), or Nathan (Thomas Cocquerel), who survived with other priests. The pacing of “Tournament of Champions” doesn’t give you a lot of time to check out mentally like the first one; instead, it’s more about the immediate problems at hand, with no player that seems inconsequential.
“Tournament of Champions” continues the first movie’s love of visceral production design (like an art deco bank or a beach) and filling its ornate sets with a zig-zagging line of clues. The puzzle traps aren’t better than the first movie, but the rush is often present in the moment, especially when the rooms become deadly in creative ways (lightning, lasers, sand!). Robitel’s editing is even sharper with the series’ main spectacle—watching characters frantically learn their surroundings and piecing together clues—even if the script stretches the definition of what a recognizable hint looks like. There’s little dead air in these movies, which is more about how they want to keep the thought process moving. But it makes the characters so conveniently bright that the film becomes rather dim.
Robitel and his fleet of screenwriters are too timid about the powerful jerks who are behind all of this. They could have raised the overall stakes by giving them a deeper backstory. This sequel doesn’t develop what makes the general premise most intriguing, even though we know from the previous film that it is used as a type of sadistic entertainment, built from lust to see people fight for their lives. Without this expansion, “Tournament of Champions” becomes too straightforward for its own good and only able to shake things up with sudden, PG-13-grade death. The third act twists don’t hit as hard, because more or less, we know how this game works.
It’s not like the script doesn’t have ideas for other games. This one even hints at an earlier puzzle round with all priests and another with pain freaks. That all sounds pretty fun, in an “Escape Room” movie way. But “Tournament of Champions” oddly eschews pomp and circumstance and prefers to think inside the box. While this second round proves why the first movie worked, it also brings the now-franchise closer to losing its spark. [B-]
“Escape Room: Tournament of Champions” is now playing in theaters.
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