Escape The Undertaker
WWE StudiosEscape The Undertaker is the latest interactive media offering from Netflix, a morph between a haunted house and an escape room, with sprinklings of professional wrestling for good measure. Escape The Undertaker follows WWE tag team The New Day – consisting of Kofi Kingston (Kofi Nahaje Sarkodie-Mensah), Xavier Woods (Austin Watson), and Big E (Ettore Ewen) – as they arrive at the house of The Undertaker (Mark Calaway) on a quest to borrow The Deadman’s magical urn to help spread their mission of positivity, but soon realise that The Undertaker may be more nefarious than they initially thought.
As The New Day delves into The Undertaker’s spooky mansion, they are quickly forced to save Big E’s soul from being consumed by the urn, while The Undertaker watches them on surveillance cameras from an unknown location. This is where the vast majority of the interactive options come in for Escape The Undertaker, as the player has to decide where to search for the keys to unlock the urn, as well as uncovering more of The Undertaker’s secrets.
With Escape The Undertaker clocking in at an incredibly short 31 minutes, there is plenty of time for the viewer to go back and explore every possible ending and option littered throughout the film. The short film offers multiple endings as The New Day confronts The Undertaker. While definitely nonsensical, Escape The Undertaker is super fun and the dynamic between the macabre Undertaker and the silly New Day works surprisingly well, as they are able to play off each other to up the stakes of the short. Each of the wrestlers turned actors obviously do well in their roles, as The New Day has been a tag team since 2014 and Calaway has played The Undertaker for over two decades. It is just like seeing the same characters that appear week after week on Raw and SmackDown. The Undertaker character in particular calls back to the more eerie and earlier days of the character when he was more spooky and working with Paul Bearer (William Moody).
Escape The Undertaker can be fun for everyone but it definitely for wrestling fans. There is so much WWE/WWF lore littered into the film. The powers of The Undertaker’s urn, in particular, gets expanded upon in the film, which is an aspect of the character that has not been seen in years. In one of the options the player is taken to a video package of Paul Bearer, which is a touching tribute to his contributions to The Undertaker character. At another point, The New Day comes across a morgue in The Undertaker’s house and find a corpse covered in a sheet with a toe tag that reads “Isaac Yankem.” Hardcore wrestling fans will note that this is a reference to Kane (Glenn Jacobs) who originally debuted as Isaac Yankem, DDS, a character meant to be the private dentist of Jerry “The King” Lawler whose purpose was to get rid of his nemesis Bret “The Hitman” Hart. Later, Jacobs would re-debut in the WWF as Kane and eventually be revealed to be The Undertaker’s brother and they would form the tag team “The Brothers of Destruction.”
While an enjoyable time, the main issue with Escape The Undertaker is the notable absence of any professional wrestling. During The New Day’s final confrontation with The Undertaker, there are some blows exchanged but none of the characters show case their signature wrestling moves or finishers. However this can be understood due to Calaway’s recent – though maybe not permanent – retirement from the sport as he is growing in age and suffering from a multitude of injuries. The other issue with Escape The Undertaker is trying to figure out where it falls within the wider WWE timeline. At one point, each member of The New Day are forced to face their fear and Kofi Kingston’s happens to be Vince McMahon telling him that he will never be good enough and never be champion. But Kingston did win the WWE Championship in 2015 at WrestleMania 35. Another issue in timing is The New Day still being together as trio, as they are currently just a duo consisting of Kingston and Woods after they were separated by the WWE draft with Woods and Kingston being on Raw and Big E being on SmackDown. While they all once again perform on Raw, they still are not back in their trio as Big E is currently serving as the WWE Champion.
Despite some structural issues, Escape The Undertaker is incredibly fun for even the smallest of professional wrestling fans. It features excellent chemistry between The New Day and The Undertaker and does a wonderful of referencing WWE lore. And clocking in at a mere half an hour, there’s really no reason to not play your way through the short and try and escape The Undertaker.