And it was ostensibly all for the sake of secretly spectating high rollers with deep pockets. The first Escape Room pic featured people having their lives upended and challenged by cruel game makers who crafted potentially deadly puzzle rooms. Several people are knocked unconscious and then revived, while others barely escape being crushed by large heavy objects. And later, a flood of acid reduces two people to mush (seen at a distance). A gas line gets ripped away from a wall and the gas jet lit on fire, which sets an entire room ablaze. A room floods with water and almost drowns a flailing victim. Someone puts her hand down on an electric hotplate burning a raw pattern into her palm.Ī puzzle must be solved using the smeared blood from someone’s cut fingertips.
Some are hit and sliced with high-powered lasers-leaving behind slightly bloody gashes in their skin and clothes. People get sucked into a swirling, bubbling sand trap. The survivors try but fail to revive him. Numerous people are hit with painful zaps, and one victim is electrocuted. In addition, a subway car is completely electrified with an increasingly stronger current.
Zoey recalls how each of the people in her first escape room trial fell, for instance, and we see quick flashbacks of those thumping, tumbling deaths during her narration. There’s nothing terribly gory on display in this PG-13 thriller, but a number of people are thumped and pummeled, some are lightly bloodied and some die in the course of the escape room tests. Now they’re all right back where they never wanted to be again: where every pen, purse or book you encounter is some nefarious clue.Īnd a deadly clock is most certainly ticking. Four strangers who, at one point, had survived escape room terrors-just like Zoey and Ben did. And they also find themselves locked in a subway car with four other strangers. They start following clues that Zoey is pretty sure will lead them back to Minos and help them gather enough evidence to shut those villains down.īefore you know it, Zoey is proven right. She can’t get past the idea that those horrible people are still out there. There’s no deadly clock ticking in your life.īut Zoey can’t let go.
Every pen, purse or book you encounter isn’t some nefarious clue, the good doctor points out. She tries to get Zoey to think about moving forward and letting go of all the torments of her past. For all she knows, they may be out there entertaining their rich, sadistic, peepshow clients with other escape rooms and other terrorized victims right now.
Zoey is equally haunted by the fact that the foul and powerful individuals behind Minos are getting away with everything. The rooms were all destroyed, and the evidence lost. She still feels trapped and tormented by the fact that nobody believes that their imprisonment in elaborately devised escape rooms ever happened. I mean she and Ben lived while other people died.īut Zoey is the exact opposite of happy. You’d think that alone would leave Zoey at least a little bit happy. And she helped her new best friend Ben Miller escape, too. For all we know, Sonya is a total fabrication, invented to hoodwink Zoey into cooperation.She beat the evil puzzle masters at Minos Escape Rooms. It's entirely possible that Amanda isn't who she says she is. The culmination of events at the end of the film feels way too easy, as even Zoey notes. We do, however, see Amanda's time as a soldier, alongside the other characters' flashback sequences in the first film.
While Amanda has mentioned her daughter, we never actually see any flashback clips with Amanda and Sonya. While it's reasonable to believe that Minos might force her into designing the latest game - especially since the game appears to be Plan B - it's just as likely that our innocent Amanda has been a Minos plant all along.
She could be referring to Zoey instead of herself, but that'd be a bit of a weird comparison to make during a major reveal. Minos doesn't seem likely to applaud anything less than first place, and Amanda was one of the first few "casualties" in the 2019 film. That's an interesting sentiment for her to express, considering Amanda doesn't come close to beating the game in the first film.