Escape Room (2017)

Escape Room (2017) takes a familiar hook—a night of playful puzzle-solving—and tightens it into a lean, nasty little pressure cooker where every clue feels like a heartbeat and every locked door has teeth. Director Peter Dukes keeps the pace brisk and the atmosphere sweaty with dread, blending supernatural menace with the ticking-clock satisfaction of watching smart people race to outthink a room that wants them dead. Skeet Ulrich brings a grounded edge to the mayhem, while the film’s best pleasures come from its scrappy, inventive use of a single location and the creeping sense that the “game” is learning faster than the players. If you want elaborate mythology or big-budget spectacle, this isn’t that kind of ride—but if you’re in the mood for a compact, high-concept thriller with a demonic twist and a steady drip of tension, it’s an easy hour to spend gripping the armrest.

Escape Room (2017) wants to mash up the ticking-clock fun of puzzle-solving with a demonic horror twist, and you can see the appeal of that setup on paper. In practice, it feels pretty thin and rough around the edges, leaning more on the idea of an escape room than delivering clever riddles, escalating tension, or satisfying scares. If you’re expecting the slick, tightly engineered kind of thriller the premise promises, you’ll likely find this one undercooked and a bit bargain-bin in execution. That said, if you’re tolerant of low-budget horror and just want a quick, simple “trapped in a room” gimmick with some supernatural flavor, it might still scratch a very specific itch.