Coming Attractions- Psycho Killer

 

Release Date- February 20, 2026

A creepy and unnerving trailer for Psycho Killer. Georgina Campbell’s Jane is obviously way in over her head. She’s chasing a sadistic killer, but she’s motivated by vengeance to catch the man, who murdered her husband in front of her.

The big question is, how far is Jane willing to go to stop the killer? She’ll have to go down a rabbit hole filled with evil and satanism, and I’m wondering if Jane has some kind of personal connection to the killer. Maybe there’s a specific reason why he chose her? Psycho Killer’s first trailer is fantastic. If we’re comparing vibes and similarities, it’s easy to point to Longlegs and Se7en for this one, and Gavin Polone’s directorial debut has all the makings of being something special. 

Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions (2021)

 

**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

Escape Room (2019)

 

**This post contains spoilers**

The Story- The Minos Corporation chooses Zoey (Taylor Russell), Ben (Logan Miller), Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll), Danny (Nik Dodani), Mike (Tyler Labine), and Jason (Jay Ellis) to participate in an escape room game. Playing the game seems like a fun challenge at first, but as the rooms become more dangerous, it’s clear Minos has sinister motivations.

My Thoughts- Escape Room features the usual cast of characters you’ll see in a survival game horror movie. Zoey is the wholesome protagonist, who wants to help and hopefully save everyone from certain death. Jason? Well, he’s a jerk. Jason represents the kind of relentless participant, who will do anything to win the game and stay alive. He’s selfish and heartless, and Jason only wants to be a team player, if it’ll help his chances of survival. But his mindset is also understandable, because if we’re being honest, not too many people are going to risk their lives to save and protect complete strangers.

Personal tragedies play a big part in the games for Escape Room. Amanda is a combat veteran with PTSD, so you can easily see why she’s the first member of the group to panic. There’s also the red jacket from Jason’s story in the outdoor winter room. Jason used that jacket to keep himself from freezing to death after he murdered his friend. In the winter room, the red jacket is shared amongst the group to fight off hypothermia, something Jason selfishly refused to do with his friend.

The clever interweaving for using personal hardships as tie-ins for the games adds an emotional layer to Escape Room. The main cast of characters are forced to face their demons. The majority of the escape rooms have their own brands of uniqueness and deadly creativity. Starting things off with the oven room was a good choice to set the tone for the rest of the movie. The upside down room with the bar and the pool table was truly unreal. It’s easily the only room, where I could buy into the possibility of anyone dying, because of how extremely dangerous everything was, a true nail biter.

Something to pay close attention to is how the mood changes, as the game progresses. At first, the banter and jokes throughout the group are playful, but that changes as things get more serious. The insults are more personal and nasty, because the group realizes death is a realistic possibility. Jason gets more belligerent with his finger wagging, while constantly trying to expose the weak links, and everyone’s moral compass is put to the test.

The second to last escape room was a big letdown for me. It’s down to Jason and Ben for the final two survivors, and Zoey is presumably dead. The whole sequence inside this boring and plain room didn’t do anything for me. I get the whole idea behind the distorted POV, because Jason and Ben were heavily drugged, but it’s just too whacky overall. And to make matters worse, the placement they chose for this room didn’t fit. It’s toward the end of the movie, so I was expecting something more complex to reflect the high stakes to make it to the finish line.

The Gamemaster’s (Yorick van Wageningen) explanation to Ben for Minos’ motivations might be a tad bit cliched, but it still works. Minos’ clients are rich and powerful, and they’re willing to pay top dollar for more extreme content. The Gamemaster believes most of the world has gone soft, and that’s where Minos steps in. You can believe the rich and powerful see ordinary people as disposable toys for their amusement, and The Gamemaster also uses gladiator games and public executions for examples. That specific group of spectators never vanished, they were just pushed further into the shadows as the world changed.

Ben making it to the end as the “dark horse” survivor was a decent enough surprise, because you knew Jason’s selfishness and his arrogance would come back to bite him sooner or later. I didn’t buy Zoey’s death in the carbon monoxide poisoning room for one second. They tried a swerve, but they invested too much in Zoey, as the shy and scrappy protagonist with a fighting spirit. She’s too smart, and Zoey was going to find a way to make it. 

Escape Room has an alternate ending, where Zoey is lured back into one of her college classrooms. She gets the $10k grand prize check (she defiantly tears it up) and her mother’s compass, and the Puzzle Maker traps her inside for another game. This ending just feels flat, when you compare it to the theatrical ending. Zoe and Ben continuing their pursuit to expose Minos, while the Puzzle Maker prepares another game for both of them with the crashing flight simulator is a far more intriguing cliffhanger and ending.

Escape Room is a fun and entertaining game horror movie, with a lot of energy and brisk pacing. The thrills are consistent, and the entire cast delivers solid performances. I almost wish Yorick van Wageningen had more screen time. I understand the idea behind saving his only appearance until the end for the big reveal, but Wageningen is genuinely evil, cold, and cruel as The Gamemaster, truly a perfect fit to represent Minos. He does a lot with a little amount of time, and Wageningen would’ve made a great villain to showcase throughout the movie.

Rating- 7/10

2013 End Of The Year Awards- Most Underrated Film- +1

**This post contains spoilers**

Clones? Broken relationships? Murder? A meteor that causes sporadic time warps?

Yep. Plus One is loaded with with a plethora of storylines, and Angad's (Rohan Kymal) wild house party is the stage for an unforgettable night of chaos. David (Rhys Wakefield) begs his ex-girlfriend, Jill (Ashley Hinshaw) for forgiveness after an accidental kiss with the woman, who defeated Jill in a fencing tournament.

David's best friend, Teddy (Logan Miller) chases Melanie (Natalie Hall) for a one night stand. As the outcast, Allison (Colleen and Suzanne Dengel) is struggling to find a place to fit in, and a series of clones threaten the party goers with an inevitable confrontation.

That's a lot to digest for one film, right? When the clones show up, Plus One's transition into the supernatural/sci-fi world feels awkward, because they're trying to progress and tell too many stories at once. David is trying to come up with an apology for Jill, but the sight of David disgusts Jill. Teddy's trying to comprehend the sight of the real Melanie and the cloned version of Melanie at once, and the angry loner (Allison) is stuck on the outside. Oh, and together, the party goers are trying to come up with a solution to stop, hide from, or fight the clones.

With all that said, I had a lot of fun with Plus One. It's a  trippy and bold sci-fi thriller, featuring a handful of genuinely shocking twists and turns. David murdering the real Jill in favor of the cloned Jill? Yeah, I didn't see that one coming, and Teddy doesn't walk away from the party with Melanie on one arm. Instead, the nerdy guy, who's fighting for the unobtainable perfect ten goes home empty-handed. The big showdown between the clones and the real party goers in the pool house during the finale? You can feel the chaos during the big brawl, and Plus One delivered a tense and satisfying finale, because it's impossible to predict the outcome of the fight.

Plus One isn't afraid to take chances, it's a refreshing change, and I appreciate the effort. Also, kudos to Ashley Hinshaw for the best performance, as the angry ex-girlfriend, who's fighting David's plea for a second chance. Bottom line, if you're looking for a unique experience, a wild ride, or something different, Plus One is worth a try.


 

+1(2013)(Minor Spoilers Review)

**This review contains MINOR spoilers, no major plot twists, reveals, or surprises are revealed in this review**

During a local house party hosted by Angad (Rohan Kymal), three friends encounter a series of different problems. David (Rhys Wakefield) is trying to repair a broken relationship with his girlfriend, Jill (Ashley Hinshaw), Allison (Suzanne  Dengel) is struggling to fit in, and David’s best friend, Teddy (Logan Miller) sets his sights on a one night stand with the seemingly unattainable Melanie (Natalie Hall).

David tires to come up with a scheme to get some time alone with Jill, so she can forget about, Steve (Peter Zimmerman), her date for the night. But an unexplainable supernatural phenomenon disrupts everything……

Well, I’ll get this out of the way now. Rohan Kymal’s Angad is the most annoying character in this film. Angad is this pandering loser, who’ll do ANYTHING to build up his reputation as the “big man on campus.” Plus, he has this annoying and persistent habit of trying to fit in with all the cool kids, when it’s clear 95% of the people at the party can stand him.

Hinshaw delivers the best performance, with Rhys Wakefield taking the spot for runner up. I get the point of Wakefield’s David being this lost and clueless dope, who’s trying to figure things out, but the Jill character is more passionate, angry, and vindictive. Bottom line, Jill has a more lively personality, and Hinshaw was far more convincing, especially during the heated arguments with David. Wakefield isn’t awful, but David is such a boring character. Logan Miller is okay at best, and Hall is just eye candy for the most part. Suzanne Dengel? She’s okay. Allison has a one-dimensional personality, as the typical angry high school outcast/loner, who spends most of her time listening to angry rock music, and hating everything. Not a bad performance from Dengel, but nothing too remarkable either.

Plus One feels like two movies in one: first half is a wild and crazy party movie, but the second half is a full blown sci-fi thriller. To use a more recent example, it’s like Project X meets an episode of The Twilight Zone. At first, you’ll hear loud club music, see wild party games, a naked woman, who’s being used as a buffet table with food spread across her body, topless women, and strippers performing some weird glow in the dark routine.

Plus One is loaded with a lot of noticeable problems, but I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t have a lot of fun with this one. Watching Plus One is like watching a flaming train wreck with a fireworks show in the background, and a bear on a unicycle juggling, it’s almost impossible to look away. The hectic mashup of sci-fi elements, a love story, and a party movie will probably annoy most people. But for me, Plus One is still an ambitious and bold sci-fi thriller, that takes a lot of risky chances with hopes of being something different, and I apprentice the effort.

Rating: 7/10

Looking for a change from Batman, Spider-Man, and Iron Man? Then get know the world's newest superheroine Freechelle Fantabulous for only $0.99 by following the link- http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EFLI6VK

Or take a trip into world of madness that includes comedy, horror, and the supernatural in my book of short stories, also only $0.99-  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EFMYZ0U

And remember Amazon offers free Kindle App downloads for various platforms. Follow this link to find out more- http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

Follow me on Twitter here- https://twitter.com/LQuigleyFan1

And don't forget to like both of my Facebook pages, because the Mitch MacReady 2 Facebook page includes quotes from both ebooks that can't fit into Tweets-

https://www.facebook.com/mitch.macready

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mitch-Macready-2/439846799459035?ref=hl

+1 (2013)(Spoiler Review)

**This review contains spoilers**


During a surprise visit to his girlfriend Jill’s (Ashley Hinshaw) college, as she prepares to compete in a fencing tournament, David (Rhys Wakefield) accidentally kisses the woman, who defeated Jill after the competition. Heartbroken at the sight of her boyfriend kissing another woman, Jill disappears before David has a chance to explain himself.

After the incident, Jill refuses to speak to or see David, and when David tries to reach out to Jill via social media, Jill blocks him. David, looking for another chance to apologize to Jill, follows his best friend, Teddy (Logan Miller) to a local house party hosted by Angad (Rohan Kymal), who’s desperately seeking acceptance from everyone. At the party, David and Teddy are surprised by Allison (Suzanne Dengel), another friend, who’s a known outcast, and David struggles to get a moment alone with Jill after she shows up to the party with a new guy named Steve (Peter Zimmerman).

But Dave’s mission to recapture Jill’s heart takes a backseat to a bigger problem, when an asteroid crashes into Earth. As the glowing asteroid fuses with the local power lines, the asteroid causes uncontrollable rips in the current timewave, creating a set of clones for each person at the party. The unexplainable phenomenon interrupts Teddy’s one night stand with Melanie (Natalie Hall), and together, David, Allison, and Teddy try to come up with a solution to control the cloning problem.

Well, I’ll get this out of the way now. Rohan Kymal’s Angad is the most annoying character in this film. Angad is this pandering loser, who’ll do ANYTHING to build up his reputation as the “big man on campus.” Plus, he has this annoying and persistent habit of trying to fit in with all the cool kids, when it’s clear 95% of the people at the party can stand him.

Hinshaw delivers the best performance, with Rhys Wakefield taking the spot for runner up. I get the point of Wakefield’s David being this lost and clueless dope, who’s trying to figure things out, but the Jill character is more passionate, angry, and vindictive. Bottom line, Jill has a more lively personality, and Hinshaw was far more convincing, especially during the heated arguments with David. Wakefield isn’t awful, but David is such a boring character. Logan Miller is okay at best, and Hall is just eye candy for the most part. Suzanne Dengel? She’s okay. Allison has a one-dimensional personality, as the typical angry high school outcast/loner, who spends most of her time listening to angry rock music, and hating everything. Not a bad performance from Dengel, but nothing too remarkable either.

Plus One feels like two movies in one: first half is a wild and crazy party movie, but the second half is a full blown sci-fi thriller. To use a more recent example, it’s like Project X meets an episode of The Twilight Zone. At first, you’ll hear loud club music, see wild party games, a naked woman, who’s being used as a buffet table with food spread across her body, topless women, strippers performing some weird glow in the dark routine, and a VERY lengthy sex scene between Miller and Hall, that’s split up into separate parts. Not complaining about seeing Hall naked, but after while, everything feels really excessive, unfunny, and unnecessarily raunchy to the point where I was just waiting for the romp to be over. Anyway, once David, Teddy, and Allison realize the clones and the rips in the timewaves, you’re thrust into a mysterious and thought-provoking sci-fi thriller.

It’s a good and bad thing for a handful of reasons. The bad side? The transition to the supernatural side of the film feels kind of awkward at first, because they’re trying to tell too many stories at once. David is still trying to fix things with Jill, but he pissed off the real Jill, so learning from his mistakes, David tries his luck with the cloned Jill. And David uses a glass to knock out the cloned version of himself, so the clone won’t ruin things with Jill. Teddy is trying to straighten out a mess after the clone versions of himself and Melanie come fact to face with the real Melanie and the real Teddy. After getting revenge on one of the mean girls, who pulled a prank on her at the party, the real Allison is wandering around until she runs into the cloned Allison, and together, both Allisons have a long talk about life, and it ends with both Allisons kissing each other. AND on top of all that, you have Teddy and Angad doing everything they can to try and convince everyone at the party the clones are real, while they devise a plan to survive.

During the calamity, the story becomes one big jumbled mess, that reaches a too frustrating point more than once, and it’s hard to overlook this. Plus, there’s no resolution to the storylines involving Allison and Teddy. Allison kisses herself (literally), and after Teddy asks for another chance with Melanie…..Melanie simply walks away without giving an answer either way? 

The good side? During the “What’s going on!“ dilemma, the twists and turns are genuinely shocking. David murdering the real Jill in favor of the cloned Jill? Yeah, I didn’t see that coming. David was SO desperate to fix things with Jill, he murdered the real Jill, because he knew the relationship was damaged beyond repair, and he didn’t want to take the chance of the cloned Jill running into the real Jill. What’s going to happen, when the clones come face to face with the real versions of themselves? The clones obviously have no idea what’s going on, but they want life, the real partygoers realize this, and during each time jump, the clones take one step closer to catching up to the current timeline.

So for the grand finale, the real partygoers, barricaded in a pool house, come face to face with the time jumping clones, and out of fear, the real partygoers do everything they can to fight, and kill the clones. It’s a chaotic and nail-biting scene to watch, because I had no idea what would happen next or who would die.

Plus One is loaded with a lot of noticeable problems, but I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t have a lot of fun (I  laughed my ass off, when the buffet woman used a flying karate kick) with this one. Watching Plus One is like watching a flaming train wreck with a fireworks show in the background, and a bear on a unicycle juggling, it’s almost impossible to look away. The hectic mashup of sci-fi elements, a love story, and a party movie will probably annoy most people. But for me, Plus One is still an ambitious and bold sci-fi thriller, that takes a lot of risky chances with hopes of being something different, and I apprentice the effort.

Rating: 7/10


Looking for a change from Batman, Spider-Man, and Iron Man? Then get know the world's newest superheroine Freechelle Fantabulous for only $0.99 by following the link- http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EFLI6VK

Or take a trip into world of madness that includes comedy, horror, and the supernatural in my book of short stories, also only $0.99-  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EFMYZ0U

And remember Amazon offers free Kindle App downloads for various platforms. Follow this link to find out more- http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

Follow me on Twitter here- https://twitter.com/LQuigleyFan1

And don't forget to like both of my Facebook pages, because the Mitch MacReady 2 Facebook page includes quotes from both ebooks that can't fit into Tweets-

https://www.facebook.com/mitch.macready

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mitch-Macready-2/439846799459035?ref=hl