The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)

The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018)

Cast

• Shay Mitchell as Megan Reed
• Grey Damon as Andrew Kurtz
• Stana Katic as Lisa Roberts / Nurse
• Louis Herthum as Grainger

Director

• Diederik Van Rooijen

Writer

• Brian Sieve

Cinematographer

• Lennert Hillege

Editor

• Stanley Kolk
• Jake York

Composer

• John Frizzell

Horror

Rated R for gruesome images and terror throughout.

85 minutes

 

 

The makers of “The Possession of Hannah Grace” clearly intended for it to be dark. After all, it’s about an exorcism that goes horribly wrong, resulting in further mayhem months later at a morgue. But they probably didn’t mean for it to be visually inscrutable, which is what this quick and dirty—and mostly scare-free—horror film ends up being.

Dutch director Diederik Van Rooijen’s movie mostly takes place in the middle of the night at a hospital, a brutalist monolith that radiates doom and gloom. (The exterior is actually the Boston City Hall building, transformed slightly with a bit of signage.) Once inside, though, everything else is dark too: the lobby, the hallways, the women’s bathroom and especially the morgue. Van Rooijen and screenwriter Brian Sieve actually use that room’s lighting as a vaguely intriguing plot point: It operates on motion sensors, turning on with a clickclickclick and an ominous buzz whenever someone enters. (The overhead lamps also happen to be shaped like a cross, in a not-so-subtle bit of symbolism.)

Surely, this was an aesthetic choice—an attempt to create an unsettling mood. But more often than not, it’s just plain difficult to see what’s going on, and that murkiness results in an overall feeling of frustration. It certainly doesn’t help that “The Possession of Hannah Grace” is one-note in its foreboding tone, punctuated by the occasional jump scare.

“Hannah Grace” begins with the title character (Kirby Johnson) undergoing a pretty standard movie exorcism. She’s tied to a bed with priests standing over her, praying and splashing her with holy water. The devil inside causes her to writhe and contort while spewing vile things. Seeing the carnage and chaos she’s causing, her dad (Louis Herthum) eventually says screw it, takes control of the situation and smothers her face with a pillow.

This is where most movies about demonic possession might end; here, it’s just the start. Because three months later, Hannah’s body turns up at the morgue on what just happens to be the first night of work for Megan (Shay Mitchell of “Pretty Little Liars”), a new intake assistant. The stoic Megan is a former cop battling demons and substance abuse issues; newly clean, she hopes for a fresh start at … the morgue. This is basically all we know about this character, who’s at the center of the film. (In order to secure the job, though, she insists in a winking bit of foreshadowing: “I believe when you die, you die. End of story.”) We know even less about the young woman who gives the film its title and serves as its driving narrative force.

Anyway, Megan tries to run through all the steps she’s just learned as far as photographing and fingerprinting the body before placing it in storage, but Hannah Grace’s overwhelming evil—even in cold corpse form—throws everything out of whack. In no time, she’s sneaking out of her drawer when no one’s looking and wreaking havoc on the few employees who have the misfortune of being on duty during the graveyard shift. This central premise is the only compelling element of Sieve’s script, but it’s executed in dreary fashion.

Part of the problem is that the rules are unclear. Sometimes Hannah Grace crawls in a crablike way, her mangled and bony body making a crackcrackcrack noise with every jumpy movement. (The sound design is indeed creepy the first time around with all these auditory tricks, but quickly grows repetitive.)  Sometimes, she walks upright. Sometimes, she leaps forward or skitters up a wall. She can interfere with cell phone signals and power lines and move entire ambulances with just a slight shove but wastes her time hanging around the hospital—and waits to inflict her wrath on Megan until the end.

We’d have no movie otherwise—and as is, “Hannah Grace” is barely 85 minutes, with an ending so abrupt that you’ll wonder whether you’ve missed something. (Spoiler alert: you haven’t.) But maybe we’d actually be able to see what’s going on in the outside world.

 

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Robin Hood (2018)

Robin Hood (2018)

Cast

• Taron Egerton as Robin Hood
• Jamie Foxx as Little John
• Jamie Dornan as Will Scarlet
• Eve Hewson as Maid Marian
• Ben Mendelsohn as Sheriff of Nottingham
• Tim Minchin as Friar Tuck

Producer

• Leonardo DiCaprio

Director

• Otto Bathurst

Director of Photography

• George Steel

Story

• David James Kelly

Screenplay

• Ben Chandler
• David James Kelly

Editor

• Christopher Barwell

Music

• Joseph Trapanese

Action, Adventure

Rated PG-13

104 minutes

 

 

You could build a suspension bridge over the gap between what "Robin Hood" could have been and what it is. Its hero is credible as a man who wants to rob from the rich and give to the poor, but the storytelling is so impoverished that the message can't stick. 

"Robin Hood" is a malleable tale, but the core is always the same: a cocky underdog fights the power on behalf of mistreated citizens. This new version from director Otto Bathurst ("Peaky Blinders") captures the heart of the legend, but frustratingly fails to translate it. Bluntly political and surprisingly coherent in its messaging, the movie is filled with deliberately modern details signaling that it's a folktale aimed at modern multiplex audiences, closer to a science fiction or fantasy epic than a "Barry Lyndon"-style "accurate" representation of life in another era. If the filmmaking and writing weren't so undistinguished, this could have been special. Instead, it's a flat and often grating experience, dotted by pockets of intelligence and surprise.

This incarnation of Robin of Locksley ("Kingsman: The Secret Service" star Taron Egerton) is a traitor to his class—a veteran of the Crusades who is literally to-the-manor born. He battles the cruel and corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham (Ben Mendelsohn) after returning home and realizing that the bad guy has taxed his community into oblivion to fund the war effort. Robin is joined by the Saracen Little John (Jamie Foxx), who becomes his friend and mentor after Robin risks treason charges to save John's son during the Crusades. 

Robin, John and their allies start stealing gold from the bad guys, Robin's face-concealing black hood becoming a revolutionary emblem on par with the Guy Fawkes mask. At the same time, Robin ingratiates himself into the Sheriff's inner circle, gathering intelligence for his growing rebellion, and uncovering a conspiracy to subjugate the people that's even more awful than what he'd imagined. The film's supporting heroes—including Robin's former fiancee Maid Marian (Eve Hewson) and the local clergyman Friar Tuck (Tim Minchin)—are quite jaded about the world. They require little prompting to join Robin's campaign to give gold and hope back to people who've been abused or taken for granted by the state.

Ben Chandler and David James Kelly's script takes a story that's several centuries old and marries it to modern-day concepts and language, and the filmmakers try to push that strategy to the next level. Like Guy Ritchie's recent attempt to update another ancient English hero in "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword"—and, for that matter, Kevin Reynold's 1991 hit "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," from which this film borrows freely—this is a loud, fast, choppy production, with a punkish yet earnest edge. It often apes the look and feel of Christopher Nolan's Batman films, trading energy for elegance, and enthusiastically owning its many, blatant anachronisms. Marian has circa 2016 smoky-eye makeup, the costuming showcases some of the yummiest custom-cut leather jackets in cinema history, and the combat sequences feature archers rapidly firing arrows at each other at close quarters, like gunfighters in a John Wick film. An opening action sequence set in Syria has stuttering handheld camerawork in the vein of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Black Hawk Down." 

The dialogue is likewise packed with modern aphorisms and political slogans that seem meant to lodge in the mind and incite passions. At one point, the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham, who's presented as a Trump-Bolsonaro-Le Pen-styled nationalist/racist despot, quotes George W. Bush's post-9/11 statement "They hate us for our freedom," in reference to the Muslim hordes that the Christian warriors are fighting overseas. He warns that they'll overrun England unless everyone pitches in with their treasure and blood. "They'll burn your houses!" the Sheriff bellows. "They'll burn your land!" Robin and John's friendship is treated as a bond between men who are smart enough to see through the forces that are trying to trick them into hating each other.

The film's genuine cynicism towards the powers that be is palpable, and it runs deeper than you expect. The Sheriff is in cahoots with a cruel and greedy Cardinal (F. Murray Abraham), who reveals that they're secretly funding both the Christians and the Muslims overseas to keep the war machine going and the gold pouring into the coffers of the local mine and foundry, which employs much of the local population and belches flame and toxic fumes. Marian's new husband Will Scarlet (Jamie Dornan), whom she married after Robin was reported dead in the war, is what 2018 political commentators would call a "centrist," expressing guarded sympathy for the motives of Robin and the other rebels while decrying their methods and worrying that they're going to upset a system that provides him with a stable and comfortable life. This is the kind of movie that turns boilerplate phrases into images, as when a newly radicalized character becomes a literal bomb-thrower.

In contrast to many other heroic narratives that are about nothing more than being opposed to bad people doing bad stuff, this "Robin Hood" is about institutional as well as personal corruption; it goes out of its way to show how one feeds and expands the other, and how perpetrators cloak themselves in political slogans and religious imagery while picking the pockets of working people and turning nations against each other. The movie is specifically an anti-organized religion statement as well as an anti-capitalist and anti-nationalist statement: a Noam Chomsky editorial with bows and arrows. 

The film's storytelling, however, is as conservative as its messaging is intriguingly radical. While modernizing other aspects of the legend, the script fails to find a new way into Robin's relationships with John (essentially another neutered Black mentor/father figure to a young, white man, his lopped-off hand preventing him from ever besting his student) and Marian (a damsel in distress, still, no matter how spunkily she resists the rape-minded Sheriff and his goons). 

The direction is paint-by-numbers, capturing every piece of relevant action but evoking nothing—which would be aesthetically offensive even if the costumers, set builders and decorators weren't in there filling every frame with colors and textures worth savoring. There's not a single witty or lyrical image anywhere in the movie, which wastes its dynamic, wide framing, and is shot in a glitzy, fast-cut style, characteristic of high-end TV pilots, complete with BOOM! sounds to inform us that something important just happened. A lot of the special effects are dodgy, particularly a wagon chase scene where Robin, Marian and John flee the Sherriff's guards and the assassin Guy of Gisborne (Paul Anderson) in the fiery mills. The actors are so clearly not inhabiting the same space as the spectacle, they might as well be standing on the deck of The Love Boat. But in the end "Robin Hood," succumbs to Marvel/DC syndrome, presumptuously setting up a sequel that it's hard to imagine anyone demanding. 

 

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Glass (2019)

Glass (2019)

Cast

• James McAvoy as Kevin Wendell Crumb / The Horde / The Beast / Patricia / Dennis / Hedwig / Barry / Jade / Orwell / Heinrich / Norma
• Bruce Willis as David Dunn / The Overseer
• Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price / Mr. Glass
• Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke
• Sarah Paulson as Dr. Ellie Staple
• Spencer Treat Clark as Joseph Dunn
• Charlayne Woodard as Mrs. Price
• Luke Kirby as Pierce

Director

• M. Night Shyamalan

Producer

• Jason Blum

Editor

• Luke Franco Ciarrocchi
• Renaldo Kell

Director of Photography

• Mike Gioulakis

Writer

• M. Night Shyamalan

Original Music Composer

• West Dylan Thordson

Drama, Horror, Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller

Rated PG-13

129 minutes

More “Split 2” than “Unbreakable 2,” M. Night Shyamalan has finally produced his first direct sequel, the mash-up that is “Glass,” bringing together characters from two of his biggest hits. As the end of “Split” hinted, that film took place in the same universe as Shyamalan’s 2000 film “Unbreakable,” still his best work to date. The promise of the coda to “Split” is fulfilled in “Glass,” bringing together Shyamalan’s vision of the Freudian brain in the uncontrolled id of DID-afflicted Kevin Crumb (James McAvoy), the regulating force of the super-ego in David Dunn (Bruce Willis), and the moderator between the hero and the villain in the ego that is Elijah Price aka Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson). Once again, Shyamalan is playing with comic book tropes, adding his twists to monologuing heroes and villains who are remarkably self-aware of their own genre arcs. There’s a truly ambitious film buried in “Glass,” and I do mean buried. The problem is that Shyamalan can’t find the story, allowing his narrative to meander, never gaining the momentum it needs to work. Say what you will about “Unbreakable” and even “Split,” they had a propulsive energy that’s lacking here, at least partially because any sense of relatability is gone. “Glass” is a misfire, and it’s the kind of depressing misfire that hurts even more given what it could have been.

“Unbreakable” and “Split” have protagonists thrust into life-changing situations. The former told the story of David Dunn, the only survivor of a horrible train crash, who learned that he was more than human. The latter tells two stories—that of a girl, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy, who returns here and is given woefully little to do), forced to discover her own strengths, and that of a mentally ill patient who may be more than your average person diagnosed with DID. 

As “Glass” opens, we know David Dunn, now known in Philadelphia as the mysterious protector called the Overseer and working with his son (Spencer Treat Clark), is a superhero. And we know Kevin Crumb has a personality called The Beast that can climb walls and take shotgun blasts. And yet so much of “Glass” is devoted to trying to convince David and Kevin that they are not super in any way. In the pursuit of another twist ending, Shyamalan takes a narrative step back, covering so much of the same ground that the two previous films did instead of carving a new path. He’s so obsessed with ending on a gotcha note that he delays any sort of narrative interest until then, basically forcing his audience to tread water until that point. Think long and hard about what you know at the end of “Glass” as opposed to what you knew at the beginning and you’ll realize how hollow this whole venture has been.

Most of “Glass” takes place at Raven Hill Memorial Psychiatric Hospital. In what could be called the prologue, David/Overseer tracks Kevin/Horde down after the villainous man with multiple personalities kidnaps four young women, holding them in an abandoned factory. The two men fight, and one immediately gets the sense that something is not quite right. This showdown between two of the most memorable characters in Shyamalan’s history lacks the punch or creative fight choreography fans should expect. The pair head out a window and into the arms of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), the confident doctor who shuttles them off to the same psych ward that’s been housing Mr. Glass for almost two decades. Glass is kept in a deeply vegetative state in a room in the same wing as David and Kevin. Dr. Staple tries to convince all three that they are not really super in any way. David’s strength isn’t that abnormal and Kevin’s powers as The Beast could be explained away.

In the midsection of “Glass,” Shyamalan hits every beat more than once, almost joylessly. Paulson gives the same speech multiple times, and a bit with a bright light that can change which personality of Kevin’s dominates goes on forever ... and then happens again. Shyamalan is determined to cycle through the back stories of these characters, even employing footage from “Unbreakable” and “Split” in flashbacks as if he doesn’t realize that 95% of viewers have seen them. He seems so intent on the reveals of his final fifteen minutes that he forgets to take opportunities to make the nearly two hours before that interesting. Why is Raven Hill such a dull bore to look at? Why is Shyamalan determined to make another film about whether or not superheroes are superheroes instead of just building on the foundation he’s created? Imagine “The Avengers” retelling all the origin stories and then questioning whether or not The Hulk is really a superhero or just an angry dude. 

There are glimpses of the crazy, ambitious movie that “Glass” could have been, and that’s what saves it from complete "Happening"-level disaster. Once again, McAvoy is giving it his all, even if he’s not getting as much back in return as he did last time (and is balanced by another half-hearted Willis performance in which I swear you can practically see him fall asleep). And there are just enough out-there ideas in “Glass” that it’s impossible to completely dismiss even if they don't come together. It’s that fine line between ambitiously clunky in a way that engages the viewer and just sloppy. I honestly kept trying to engage with “Glass” as a fan of Shyamalan’s early films, comic books, and movies that try to mash-up familiar genres in a way that makes a new one. I ultimately resigned myself to the fact that it’s not my fault that it’s broken.

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Bumblebee (2018)

Bumblebee (2018)

Cast

• Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie Watson
• Dylan O'Brien as Bumblebee (voice)
• Jorge Lendeborg Jr. as Memo
• John Cena as Agent Burns
• Angela Bassett as Shatter (voice)
• Justin Theroux as Dropkick (voice)
• John Ortiz as Agent Powell
• Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime (voice)

Director

• Travis Knight

Writer

• Christina Hodson

Cinematographer

• Enrique Chediak

Editor

• Paul Rubell

Composer

• Dario Marianelli

Action, Adventure, Science Fiction

Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action violence.

114 minutes

"Bumblebee," the first live-action Transformers movie to be directed by somebody other than Michael Bay, a Bizarro World version of this year's "The Predator," though only in one very particular way: there's too much undercooked human drama and not enough 'splodey high-concept stuff (which is competent). Sure, "Bumblebee" may seem like a welcome change-up after six Bay-ified Transformers flicks. But, as somebody who quit the recently revived franchise after the fourth entry, I have to say: so what? "Bumblebee" is only comparatively modest: it's 113 minutes and feels longer, and plays like a lukewarm, John Hughes-ified clone of "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial." There's not only nothing new here, there's nothing convincing. And if I'm supposed to judge "Bumblebee" based on how well it succeeds at what it tries to do (rather than what came before it), it's still not very good.

"Bumblebee" begins with a lifeless homage/tip of the cap to the animated "Transformers: The Movie." War has come to Cybertron, the home of the Autobots—who have apparently already visited Earth, and therefore look like cars—and the Decepticons, who also look like cars and jets and things, despite ... not having been to Earth yet? You guessed it, dear reader: "Bumblebee" is a prequel, a bridge between the notoriously confusing "Transformers: The Movie" and Bay's tediously noisy "Transformers," so it makes sense that this new movie should be ... well, a bit like both the older Transformers film and the newer Transformer films, actually.

Yet while "Bumblebee" is a movie where sentient war machine robots go pew-pew at each other—and blow up trucks, and sometimes reduce human beings to translucent goo—this is also apparently a film about generically rebellious teenager Charlie Watson ("True Grit" star Hailee Steinfeld), a young woman who listens to The Smiths, resents her mom ("Better Things" star Pamela Adlon), and has a tentative romance with a wimpy boy-next-neighbor named Memo (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.). Throw in the mute, nigh-magical, E.T.-like Bumblebee, and bam, you got yourself a thrice-nuked fish-out-of-water-tale.

The film's "formulaic" nature isn't necessarily a bad thing. Problems do, however, inevitably arise with "Bumblebee" since it often appears to be stuck on fast-forward, especially during big emotional moments. Several key scenes—ones that are supposed to establish the film's heartstring-tugging stakes—feel bewilderingly inconsequential, but only because screenwriter Christina Hodson's scenario (realized as it is by director Travis Knight and the gang), feels totally rushed. It's enough to leave viewers with burning questions, though the answers to those questions might seem obvious to anyone who's cursorily familiar with post-"E.T." fish out of water stories. 

Like: why did Bumblebee wait so long—in an early scene, before he loses his voice, and also one second before missiles decimate a bunch of gruff military guys—to command them to "Run?" Because the filmmakers don't have an extra couple seconds to earn genuine dramatic tension, not when they could just make their robot hero strike a cool pose and then get blown up. And why did Hodson and company have the film's villainous Decepticons kill Bumblebee’s Autobot friend on another planet before viewers are introduced to that character in a prior scene? Because wanton death is dramatic! 

As for the film's supporting characters, the one whose expectations Charlie rebels against: they're sadly not well-developed either. Which is a problem, since I can't root very hard for Charlie if my expectations are not overturned with hers. Stephen Schneider's amiably goony stepdad isn’t a convincing stick in the mud since his character's most heinous crimes against Charlie are practicing defensive driving and earnestly recommending one self-help book. And John Cena—playing cranky-pants, anti-robot military guy Agent Burns—isn’t a believable trigger-happy villain, despite the scary scar on his cheek. Finally, Lendeborg's Memo isn’t a credible nerd, despite the way he breathlessly explains why he wears disposable hair nets (sanitary reasons) when he’s confronted by a vaguely threatening valley girl bully.

Then again, what would you expect from a movie that asks viewers to fall in love with Bumblebee, a character who (in this film) appears to be a cuddly VW-shaped war machine? At the beginning of the movie, Bumblebee blows up a robot to rescue of his leader Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen). Later, after a bunch of sappy moments that don't quite land, he blows up a bunch of other stuff (mostly inanimate). Yes, Bumblebee ostensibly loves Charlie, his human owner/buddy. But the military? And the bad robots? According to the film’s aimlessly destructive (but convincing) logic, Bumblebee delivers the only fitting punishment for their (inefficient) kind of violent intolerance: total destruction.

Look, I’m not expecting the shooty-shoot robot movie to deliver a great anti-war, anti-consumerist epic (I used to love “Transformers: Beast Wars” when I was a pre-teen). I do, however, wish that somebody who was responsible for this film’s creation was a little more serious about the tropes that they mercilessly ripped off, I mean borrowed, from executive producer Steven Spielberg. There's nothing implicitly wrong with this movie's approach. You just have to do something with it.

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Escape Room (2019)

Escape Room (2019)

Cast

• Taylor Russell as Zoey
• Deborah Ann Woll as Amanda
• Tyler Labine as Mike
• Logan Miller as Ben
• Jay Ellis as Jason
• Adam Robitel as Gabe
• Nik Dodani as Danny
• Jessica Sutton as Allison

Director

• Adam Robitel

Writer (story by)

• Bragi Schut

Writer

• Bragi Schut
• Maria Melnik

Cinematographer

• Marc Spicer

Editor

• Steve Mirkovich

Composer

• John Carey
• Brian Tyler

Action, Horror, Thriller

Rated PG-13 for terror/perilous action, violence, some suggestive material and language.

100 minutes

 

 

“Escape Room,” a new PG-13-rated horror film, is a sometimes diverting, but overly familiar series of set pieces in search of a good melodrama. There’s not much of a plot: six disposable protagonists try to solve a series of inter-connected puzzles, and death is the penalty for failure.

There’s also not much reason to care if these protagonists live or die, a demerit that slightly (but notably) distinguishes “Escape Room” from what appears to be its creators’ biggest influence: the go-for-broke “Saw” movie franchise, a series of “torture porn” flicks that weirdly improved as its creators grew more desperate to keep diehard fans (and only diehard fans) interested. The “Saw” movies are probably best remembered for their instantly dated gore. But, speaking for myself: I love their over-the-top soap opera plotting, especially in later sequels like “Saw VI” and “Saw: The Final Chapter” (the latter of which is not, as horror fans know, the last “Saw” sequel). 

“Escape Room” has a handful of enjoyably bonkers moments, most of which involve nonsensical death traps. But “Escape Room” is also anemic compared to the “Saw” movies, as you might imagine based on the film’s comparatively weak PG-13 rating. That wouldn’t be a problem if there were other major differences between “Escape Room” and the “Saw” sequels. Sadly, “Escape Room” is only longer and more impersonal than what came before it. 

“Escape Room” also feels pretty schematic since very few plots twists serve to develop the film’s cipher-like characters. Six thrill-seekers pile into the waiting room of a non-descript Chicago office building. A woman’s voice tells them to wait to be seen. They follow her instructions and exchange introductory pleasantries. But then the suite’s door handle breaks, their disembodied host’s voice disappears (surprise: she was a recording!), and a powerful convection oven-style heater turns on. The film’s deadly games begin.

If you’re like me, you probably don’t watch movies like “Escape Room” and “Saw” for their characters or performances. Still, that might be something you do while watching “Escape Room” given how threadbare the rest of the film is. Unfortunately, Nik Dodani and Jason Ellis—who respectively play clueless puzzle nerd Danny and hothead know-it-all Jason—are often loud and annoying. And Tyler Labine, in the role of the likeably clueless trucker Mike, barely does anything. Heck, even the characteristically charming Deborah Ann Woll—as the tough, capable war vet Amanda—is barely able to steal a single scene (you’ll know it when you see it).

None of this would be so bad if the two least interesting performers and characters didn’t overshadow everyone else. Logan Miller—as the twitchy (but young!) alcoholic Ben—is maybe one of the least convincing Byronic teenage protagonists in a recent horror film. And Taylor Russell’s withdrawn college student Zoey is exclusively defined by her exasperating savant-like behavior. You probably already know what’s going to happen to Ben and Zoey, but that also wouldn’t be a problem if the rest of “Escape Room” wasn’t so uninspired. 

To be fair: the death trap set pieces are united by dumb-fun themes, like Tim Burton Room or Dirty Hospital Ward. But that’s about it. The oven-heated waiting room features dull clues, like an (apparently) unread copy of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and a barely full water-cooler, too. And an upside-down billiards room is only noteworthy because of its annoyingly malfunctioning jukebox (it plays only one song, loudly and frequently!) and rapidly collapsing ceiling, I mean floor. 

Sure, it's less fun than the "Saw" movies, but why doesn’t “Escape Room” work on its own terms? The characters all have dark secrets that ostensibly give meaning to their Sisyphean struggles. But their secrets aren’t dark enough, nor are their Rube-Goldbergian trials wild enough to be memorable. (The second-to-last puzzle room, which looks like a condemned hospital ward, is especially tedious). “Escape Room” may be a welcome oasis at the start of January’s seemingly vast pre-Oscars wasteland. But if you miss “Escape Room” while it’s in theatres, you can probably miss it altogether.

 

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