In short: Escape Room (2019)

Take a couple of strictly one-note characters whose so-called character arcs will be clear to anyone who has seen any movie at all after their introductory scenes (using actor and character names seems to be overkill by suggesting there’s anything going on there at all). Drop them into a boring and unimaginative series of escape rooms that end in strictly family-friendly deaths, like an even worse version of Saw had a boring baby with the mutant love child of Final Destination and The Game, excising every bit of possible excitement and depth that might still exist with the axe of the lazy hack writer. Direct the whole affair with little flair and only the most basic of craftsmanship. Subtract any knowledge of the real world, the laws of physics (even those that would arguably make the set pieces here more exciting). For some godawful reason add two and a half endings more than this needs, including what feels like a cringeworthy bid for a sequel. Voila, you have Escape Room, the final proof that you really don’t need any craftsmanship or effort to make a movie for Sony. Which is also rather confusing, seeing as director Adam Robitel’s other feature length movie was the rather wonderful The Taking of Deborah Logan, a film that’s the opposite of this one in basically everything.

The worst thing about the whole affair is that there’s no reason for the film to be quite this bad: I’d be perfectly willing and able to suspend my disbelief when it comes to the one-note characters and its complete dependence on artificial dumb set pieces. However, the film would need to meet me halfway by, say, demonstrating some sense for constructing set pieces that are interesting or exciting, or by having them resonate with character backgrounds in ways that actually make sense (which would also help elevate the characters to a second note), or by at least pretending to attempt to entertain me.