No Escape
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No Escape at its most average is a simple Saw clone, at its worst, it is a redundant copy of The Game with a face palm inducing ending.
Riffing off a certain type of YouTube vlogger style that has become infamous in recent years, No Escape quickly introduces social media sensation Cole (Keegan Allen). A bombastic personality seeking the most thrilling events for him and his friends to partake in. Along with his girlfriend and close friends they end up in Moscow, after one of the friends promises he has found an escape room that will be more intense than anything they have ever done before. A simple premise serves as a decent set-up for a Hostel/Saw type of film for the Instagram generation. It’s been a fair length of time since these films devoured the horror scene, so there was certainly an opening for No Escape to fill, sadly the chance is missed.
Writer/Director Will Wernick continues to explore his interest in the Escape Room idea following on from his aptly titled Escape Room (2017), with a large portion of No Escape being centred around a similar race against the clock narrative. The film manages to keep tensions high in the first half with some Saw like traps — some of which being directly lifted from the franchise — yet they serve well as a cheap thrill with the dangling promise of some over the top gore. However, even as a torture-porn film No Escape fails to deliver any real squirm inducing moments except for one. The film very quickly becomes plodding and increasingly redundant, banking on the fact that you care enough about the vlog star to connect with him. While Keegan Allen portrays the obnoxious vlog star well enough, like most of the cast he struggles to deliver in the more emotionally intense scenes which leads to some unintentional comedic moments.
While the film is flirting with some themes of social media ego versus the true person behind the camera, ultimately, No Escape fails to rise to the films of which it is riffing from, most of which are not particularly great to begin with yet were at the very least filled with some creative ideas, ideas which are almost void in No Escape.
