User Reviews

Wasn't an awful movie, acting was decent and the idea was half there... My theory is the tea contained poison rather than a hallucinagen and everyone died from drinking the tea and was stuck in a limbo type place of constantly playing the game especially with the ambiguous ending... I like that it is quite open to interpretation.

Okay. So the movie could have been better and what I figure happened was first of all the tea contained some sort of hallucinogen thereby explaining the painting that led to the lake with woman and chains and the other weird monster sounds and the one woman watching herself try to escape the room, etc. The ending when father and daughter are back in diner and then to car with yet another lock was them really still being in the game at the house tricking them to believe they escaped. They will NEVER escape and will spend the rest of their lives trying to survive the house.

So the car of a father and daughter breaks down in a small eery village. Very cliché, but okay. They decide to spend some time in an escape room, which is recommended by a waitress at the local diner. Upon arrival they are immediately subverted in the story, together with 3 others, because that's absolutely normal and they don't have to pay or anything.

The story is that there once lived an inventor who was into necromancy or something and they have to help 5 people who went lost in the house escape. That would be okay, if there would be anything during the movie that points back at that story, other than one line "the Inventor is back!"

What follows is a string of horror movie clichés, all of which have no tie to the story.

Who was the Inventor? How come people get lost in the house? Why are there time loops? What was growling at Karen in the basement? What was the meaning of the painting scene whit the chains? Who or what killed Tyler? What was the role of Betsy in all this? Did the tea play any role in what the participants saw? How did the diner (including the parking lot) become part of the haunted house?

If only a few of these questions would be answered in the end, the movie would be okay. I was waiting for the moment that would make me go: "Aha, that's why this and that happened!" But there's absolutely nothing explained or tied up, so we just leave with a whole bunch of loose ends.

All in all a waste of time.

Drinking game alert! Every time you hear the name "Karen" take a shot! Just kidding, do NOT do this, you will most likely get alcohol poisoning.

This movie had potential, but it was completely lost with no real answers, explanation and plot holes galore.

Were they dead the whole time? Did the tea kill them? But if they were dead, how did future chick call current chick on the phone?

Who's hand does Karen see when she climbs out of the room? Who is stalking her and growling and dragging something loud around while she hides?

What drags the good looking guys out from the tunnel?

Who is Josie? Who is the inventor? He is back? Is he in control?

The painting/chain scene...?

Did Karen and her dad start the escape room at the diner and that's why they went back? When did they die? ARE THEY EVEN DEAD!?!?

I could keep writing out questions that will never be answered. You get the idea. Maybe you should drink every time someone yells "Karen" may help you not care that nothing makes sense in this movie.

The concept is good and the ambiance adds a macabre feel but after that not much makes sense. Spoilers: So the escape room house is in the middle of nowhere , they pull up but no cars in parking lot yet there are 3 other participants . Then the host is very odd and no one is sure if she's putting on an act. At that point why would people want to stay. At any rate there's a lot of odd happenings with little to no explanation as to what's going on. People disappear, die, go back in time anc the movie ends:/ I was actually irritated at the end because I was expecting the conclusion to bring it all together but it just confused me more.

This was a decent watch. Performances were very hammy and the dialogue involved characters repeatedly calling each other by their first name - or "Dad" - to such a degree it was almost uncomfortable. Nobody talks like that. But it was pretty funny! And maybe it carries credence to my theory behind the story. Read on and find out why, haha. Up front, I would recommend this as a fun movie to watch with friends, but despite my speculations below, which I had a lot of fun considering, it's not exactly great, so watch it with an open mind (if you're so inclined)!

The story has perhaps most of one leg to stand on. Here's my armchair theory: they all ghosts. The empty drive outside the house despite the waiting participants gave me an instant "they're actually all dead!" vibe.

My thinking is that when the car broke down, Dad and Karen are standing in the road - while what actually appears to be a TOW TRUCK which would be helpful given the circumstances - roars by, they got slammed and killed via vehicular manslaughter. A clue is in the line, "you could have been killed!", Dad says when he grabs Karen's arm when she's glued to her phone. So likely that's their cause of death - they are, from that point on, ghosts in limbo. The swooning closeups on Betsy lend an otherworldly tone when she describes the escape house - everyone these two encounter is inhabiting shared limbo.

The house is in fact perpetuating The Inventor's experiments, I do believe. He wanted to commune with the other side for whatever reason, and created an inescapable trap for ghosts for him to experiment upon - and he definitely experimented on live people in various ways in order to determine some way of communicating with the dead, as we see in the morgue. He is long gone, but his sadistic, single-minded, monstrous pursuits and experimental trials on living people probably presented - when he kicked - in his becoming a ghost monster, continuing to turn the gears, maintaining his machine of study, and becoming an actual horror-creature within the ghostly realm inside his house.

None of the other participants provide a lot in terms of their own deaths. Having only watched once, I'm thinking that probably their end is echoed by what happens in the "game." (Melanie even has a line about that they're all living echoes.) Tyler was probably cheating on Melanie - why else would he be so preoccupied with his phone when theyre both on an outing for her birthday? - and it destroyed their relationship, and he hung himself. Melanie perhaps replayed the moment in her mind, discovering his body - being a ghost she was unwilling to recognize the reason for the perpetual loop, entering and reentering the same room over and over - and likely originally suffered a similar fatal accident from feeling so distraught and disoriented by his suicide.

Andrew, I think, is probably some sort of rehabilitated ex-con. He's got charisma and chutzpah, but talks about socialization therapy and fixates on the barred windows, besides being unnerved by small, enclosed spaces. He just gets grabbed in the duct, so nothing to infer there, but his original death was probably incurred by his trying to help someone, to turn a new leaf, and it didn't pay off. I enjoyed his character the most.

I'd imagine Josie was an assistant to The Inventor and he turned her into an experiment one way or another, culminating in exploratory tummy surgery.

The shared loops, revisiting places, and trippy elements? I suppose probably that's just a side effect of being a ghost trapped in a mad scientist's experiment, one that probably digs into whatever possible means could force a ghost into interacting with the physical world and stay kept in The Inventor's clutches, while still, too, clinging to recently retained memories.

It's kinda like Silent Hill 2, I think, how everyone there interacts with this horror space and perceives it differently. (Also retrieving a key from a yucky toilet is very Silent Hill and I loved that!)

About the perpetual naming of characters in the dialogue. Initially it's a cute pissy reaction from Karen - Dad is constantly trying to get her attention ("Karen. Karen. Karen. Karen! Won't you just talk to me? For a second? Please?"), and she responds by calling him "Dad" constantly. Probably as a sneering reminder to him, too, that they hardly have any relationship. But as the movie goes on, it's *incessant* these characters referring to each other by name, it's crazy! Maaaaybe it's just ghosts sticking a pin into an identity. They don't want to forget or lose themselves or the people they value.

I missed when Andrew introduced himself (I, um... don't think he ever actually did), but he seems reluctant to admit himself to the others. Reinforces my theory about him, I think. Once he starts acting alongside them, a part of the team, is when they start calling him by his name. His desire to do better is who he is now, rather than the person he had been and how he had defined himself for most of his life, probably with shame and disgust.

But it may just be weird writing, I just don't know!

I've probably given this time-sink a bit more than its due. But that's okay, given it's a helluva lot better than most flicks with horror tags I've seen recently. I enjoyed watching it, and I didn't find it to be as pointless as most other reviewers seem to have found it. I liked the ideas, but the execution could have been better. Plus, the actual escape room elements were really fun and totally aligned with real life escape room logic, btw. I enjoyed this one.

I actually found this movie interesting at first...But as I watched it I realized there was absolutely NO story line. No explanation of how any of them got stuck. The acting was a bit questionable as well. I kept waiting for some sort of backstory about the house...still nothing. The ending was a bunch of BS. They were still stuck in the "escape room" and the Diner was in on it. This should have NEVER been made because it made no sense at all. I gave it a four for trying but I wouldn't waste my tome with this crap again.

There is a lot of horror cliché thingy happening in the movie and in the end the writer don't have any idea how to connect the dots and explain why these things are happening so the writer decided to just end it without explaining the reasons and end the movie . And there it is -u wasted your time (1hr 25min). I should suggest to put sth like "congratulations, u have sucessfully wasted 1hr and 25 mins" in the end.

This movie make no sense at all what happened at the end for Andrew and who behind all this and where is The Inventor . for the first half it was good, then loses it way in unclear nonsense

I watched it. It was pretty confusing throughout the whole freaking house. Who was the inventor, who was chasing them, what was the shadow for, and just the whole experience. The where in a time loop. what was the point in the ending? So many questions to the plot and barely any meaning to what was even happening.