**This post contains spoilers, including thoughts on the alternate opening and ending **
The Story- Continuing their pursuit to expose Minos, Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) travel to New York to find more evidence. But things take an unexpected turn, when a homeless man lures Zoey and Ben into another one of Minos’ games by stealing Zoey’s necklace.
Zoey and Ben are forced to survive another series of escape rooms with former winners including, Theo (Carlito Olivero), Brianna (Indya Moore), Rachel (Holland Rode), and Nathan (Thomas Cocquerel). The players are put to the test and pushed to their limits, and a surprising return forces Zoey to make a difficult decision.
My Thoughts- Tournament Of Champions knocks it out of the park again with a different set of more grandiose escape rooms. Each escape room is uniquely different and has its own brand of chaotic life or death danger, especially the bank and vault escape room. The subway train, the bank and vault, the beach, and the outdoor New York City escape rooms all had genuine awe-inspiring atmospheres, but the smaller and more modest escape rooms also worked here. The water cage and the sauna escape rooms fit within the story to play up the claustrophobia and anxiety more, so you still get that strong sense of panic and dread, just on a smaller scale.
Escape Room 2019 took the clever approach to use the participant’s personal tragedies and traumas as tie-ins for the escape rooms and the clues within the rooms to add an emotional layer, but that’s not the case in the sequel. They were clearly going with a bigger razzle-dazzle style for the escape rooms here and more complex problem solving. It’s a noticeably different approach that still works. The strong sense of urgency is intact, and there’s a few believable tense moments, with a lot of good close calls in the NYC acid rain and the bank escape rooms. Including two exits during the beach escape room delivered more hysteria, because when you consider everything she’s been through, it’s easy to buy into Zoey’s desperation to finally escape the game.
The teamwork in Tournament Of Champions is more cohesive and fluid, and you won’t see any selfish characters resembling Jason from the original. Everyone in the sequel is a former champion. They know how dangerous the games are, and they know Minos means business. You can say the stunt he pulled in the bank escape room was stupid, but Nathan solely risked his life twice to help the group.
We already know about Zoey and Ben’s stories and their motivations, and I was hoping for more character depth for the rest of the contestants. Brianna is a social media influencer and a travel blogger, and that’s it? Rachel has a high tolerance for pain, but they never go into any details about her being a “pain freak.” Nathan is traumatized. He’s an alcoholic, and something about his life as a priest is clearly bothering him.
The original did a good job of exploring the traumas behind each contestant, and working their traumatic experiences into the escape rooms. With the exception of Nathan and to a lesser extent, Theo (he loves his wife and doesn’t want to be late to her birthday party), there’s no real attempts to explore the backstories behind the contestants. So if we’re talking about performances, the cast is basically limited to frantic shouting and panicky reactions.
Amanda is alive! That’s the big surprise towards the end. But it’s not a happy reunion with Zoey and Ben, because it’s revealed Amanda has been working with Minos to design escape rooms. We know for sure the beach escape room was Amanda’s brainchild, and she’s only working as an escape room builder, because Minos kidnapped her daughter. Of course, Amanda comes to her senses and helps Zoey and Ben escape, after Zoey refuses Minos offer to work for them.
So they’re in the clear and Minos is done for, right? Well, Zoey and Ben are stuck in another escape room on a plane to end the movie. Zoey realizes something is wrong, when she sees her therapist (Lucy Newman-Williams) on the flight, who’s revealed to be a plant from Minos. It’s the plane crash escape room that was teased at the end of the first movie, and it plays into Zoey’s fears of flying.
But wait there’s more! In the alternate opening and ending, we learn more about the Puzzle Maker, Henry (James Frain) his daughter, Claire (Isabelle Fuhrman), and his wife, Sonya (Tanya Van Graan). There’s a twist, where it’s revealed Claire is the true Puzzle Maker and architect behind the escape rooms, and Henry’s been stealing her ideas and passing them off his own for years. All the escape rooms were inspired by events during Claire’s childhood, and as a child, Claire is the one who killed her mother with the sauna escape room.
So which ending is better? I have to go with the ending in the alternate version. It’s a definitive ending with more closure. Claire helps Ben and Zoey escape. There’s no cliffhanger for their ending, and Amanda and her storyline are completely cut out of this version. There’s also a slight crack in the door to continue the story. Claire presumably kills Henry, and she promises to fulfill her true potential after she escapes from her prison.
Fuhrman and Frain delivered a pair of solid performances, and their characters added a good emotional layer to the movie, with the unusual and dysfunctional family dynamic. The extended cut also shows more footage, with Zoey struggling to get on a plane again. The scene where Zoey envisions her mother warmly encouraging her to join her on the flight did a good job of showing why Zoey is still paranoid, and you can understand why it’s not so easy for her to move on.
I don’t hate the theatrical ending, but it’s too wide open. All of the struggles Zoey and Ben went through are meaningless. On the plane, Zoey mentioned the escape rooms were “too easy” this time around, and Amanda revealed the reason for that earlier. It was all one big recruitment scheme to get Zoey to work for Minos. Going back to the NYC acid rain room, it’s easy to see how things were set up for Zoey to be the winner. Rachel and Brianna never had a chance to get inside the taxi.
So if we’re going by the theatrical ending, everything was a ruse to get Zoey to lower her guard and finally get on a plane. Zoey and Ben didn’t really accomplish anything, and Amanda’s shocking return is wasted.
I never believed Zoey and Ben were in any real danger, but Tournament Of Champions is still a satisfying sequel. Following in the footsteps of its predecessor, Tournament Of Champions delivers consistent thrills and suspense with a speedy pace. The sequel is also loaded with amazing set pieces and good eye candy. Logan Miller and Taylor Russell share believable chemistry as best friends, and there’s slight teases for a possible romance. Zoey and Ben developed a tight bond, and they’re genuinely willing to risk their lives to keep each other safe.
The theatrical ending and the extended ending are completely different with two separate paths. The big difference is, and I’ve said this before, but the extended version’s ending gives you the impression a sequel could happen. The theatrical version’s ending will leave you with the impression that a sequel NEEDS to happen. The theatrical ending shows the start of an escape room game, and Henry’s identity is never revealed.
I know it’ll probably never happen, but personally, I was holding out hope for an Escape Room 3. There’s untapped potential with mainstream game horror movies. Escape Room could’ve been a nice alternative to Saw, if you’re not into the more extreme gory stuff. Zoey and Ben worked as a duo, and it’s easy to fit them into future films, as two players who managed to survive Minos.
Rating- 7/10
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