Escape Room: Tournament of Champions

THE GIST: Zoey and Ben decide it's time to stop whoever was behind their Escape Room nightmare from subjecting anyone else to it ever again. As soon as they get to New York, they get surreptitiously trapped into a new Escape Room together with four strangers, all of whom had won their own previous rounds.

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is the sequel to Escape Room, which, while not great, certainly felt fresher and wittier than this movie.

Too many occurrences here are way too convenient and unrealistic, starting in earnest with how the six players come together.

Also, while the producers might have felt the urge to top the original's room setups, this time they made them so vast and complex that they also end up feeling unrealistic.

Finally, the runtime of this movie is under 88 minutes, which is hardly enough time for any real character or story development (and it shows); and such a compressed timeline forces the actors to run through their lines, as well as the solutions to the various puzzles, at warp speed, needlessly straining the believability factor further.

THE BOTTOM LINE: If you liked the original, like I did, you might want to check this out in case they make a third chapter, but expect to be frustrated by the end result.

Grade: 4.5