Adam Robitel’s Escape Room was a fun surprise back in 2019. Starring Taylor Russell and Logan Miller, the film focused on a group of people playing in an Escape Room. Escape Rooms are ones you’re locked in, where you’re given riddles to solve before moving on. Only in this case, the rooms were deadly. The sequel looks like it offers even greater challenges, this time to individuals who have already survived the games before.
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions premieres on July 16.
We Summon The Darkness is a horror/comedy that has got a devilish little twist that I can’t spoil in this review.
That’s a shame because, believe me, I would love to spoil it. I would love to tell you all about the twist and about how much I love the twit and how clever I felt it all was but really, this is a twist that you need to experience for yourself. I don’t know if it’s really possible to go into a movie blind anymore but if there’s any movie that benefits from being viewed with as little foreknowledge as possible, it’s We Summon The Darkness.
I can tell you that that movie takes place in Indiana in 1988. It follows six people — three women and three guys — over the course of one long and very eventful night. It starts with Alexis (Alexandria Daddario), Val (Maddie Hasson), and Bev (Amy Forsyth) heading to a heavy metal concert out in the middle of nowhere. As they head to the concert, we see glimpses over an evangelist (Johnny Knoxville) railing against heavy metal and Satanism. We also hear some random news reports about some recent murders, all of which appear to have been the work of Satanists. It’s obvious that this film takes place in a very religious community, one that feels it is currently under attack from the forces of darkness.
At the concert, the girls meet up with three dorky guys, Mark (Keenan Johnson), Kovacs (Logan Miller), and Ivan (Austin Swift). Ivan is the leader of the guys, an outspoken atheist who is clearly skeptical of all of this Satanic panic. Mark, meanwhile, is celebrating one last hurrah before heading off to Los Angeles. Alexis invites the boys to come back to her father’s mansion, which is apparently empty for the night. The boys agree and….
….all Hell breaks loose.
And that’s all I’m going to tell you about the plot. In fact, I probably shared too much already. What I will say is that the film takes you by surprise. Just from reading about the film’s opening few minutes, you may think you know who these characters are but, instead, they surprise you. You may also think that you know how all of the chaos at the mansion is going to play out but again, the film surprises you.
We Summon The Darkness is a clever and intense mix of horror and satire, one that keeps the audience guessing. From the strong opening to the twisty conclusion, this is a film that grabs your attention and refuses to let it go. Director Marc Meyers does a great job of ramping up the tension and he’s helped by a wonderful cast, all of whom bring their odd characters to life. Alexandra Daddario and Ivan Swift are the cast stand-outs, with Daddario especially tearing through the film like a force of nature. Though I initially assumed that Johnny Knoxville’s role was an example of stunt casting, he actually gives a good performance as a character who turns out to be far more important than you might initially assume.
We Summon The Darkness can currently be summoned from Netflix and it’s worth the watch.
Does everyone here remember Escape Room?
Though it may be hard to believe now, Escape Room was actually the first surprise hit of 2019. When the film was first released on January 4th, nobody expected much from it. January, of course, is when the year’s worst movies are usually released. The studios figure that they can get rid of their disasters while everyone’s busy trying to predict the Oscar nominees and usually, the studios are correct. The ad campaign for Escape Room made it look like just another slasher movie, the mainstream reviewers were, as they tend to be with January horror movies, unimpressed and I don’t think anyone expected the film to make a dent in the box office.
And yet, in the end, Escape Room did pretty well for itself at the box office. Not only did it open stronger than expected but it remained fairly strong (at least by the standards set by previous January horror films) during its second week of release. The film managed to hold its own opposite Aquaman, which had pretty much drowned every other competitor. A sequel was quickly greenlit.
What drew people to Escape Room? I think it was the title. For a while, people were genuinely obsessed with the idea of escape rooms. For those who have a life outside of the internet, an escape room is a game in which a group of people are locked in a room and have to figure out how to get the door unlocked. This usually involves searching the room, gathering clues, and figuring out a password or something similar. Personally, I’ve never done the whole escape room thing and, being that I’m rather claustrophobic, I doubt that I ever will. Add to that, I absolutely suck at solving puzzles so I imagine that I would be trapped in that room for a long time! However, there are other people who absolutely love escape rooms and I imagine that every single one of them went to see this movie.
Escape Room is about a group of people who all receive a mysterious imitation, inviting them to an escape room and promising $10,000 to whomever wins. Among those involved, there’s Zoey (Taylor Russell), who is a college student. She’s studying physics so we automatically know that she’s going to be our hero. Ben (Logan Miller) is a stockboy and is just bland enough to be a potential romantic interest for Zoey. Mike (Tyler Labine) drives a truck. Jason (Jay Ellis) is rich and, therefore, evil. Danny (Nik Dodani) is the geeky escape room expert. And Amanda (special guest Deborah Ann Woll) is the Iraq war veteran. They’re a group of smart people but it apparently didn’t occur to anyone to just stay home for the weekend. I mean, $10,000 is not that much.
Anyway, it turns out that the escape room isn’t just one room. Instead, it’s several rooms and each room requires the group to solve a different puzzle. Each room is also designed to potentially kill. One heats up like an oven. Another features a frozen pond, specifically designed to allow a player to fall through the ice. Another room looks like an operating room from Hell. My favorite room was the upside down pool hall with the floor/ceiling that started to break up as soon as the group entered. That was fun.
Of course, it turns out that everyone playing the game has a secret in their past and each room has been designed to force them to confront those secrets. Eventually, it’s revealed who is behind all of this and it’s not a shock at all. In fact, Escape Room‘s final scenes are probably the film’s worst because the movie doesn’t really have a conclusion. Instead, the filmmakers might as have just slapped a big “To Be Continued” across the screen.
Oh well! Flaws and predictability aside, Escape Room is actually kind of fun. The characters are all pretty much disposable but the actors all do their best with the material that they’ve been given. Of course, the film’s main attraction is the chance to see all the various rooms and discovering how they’ve been booby trapped. Fortunately, each room is fascinating in its own individual way and the puzzles are genuinely challenging. (I would have totally died if I was in this movie.)
Escape Room is a decent enough way to spend 100 minutes.
One of my favorite films of 2017 was Before I Fall, which was kind of a combination of Mean Girls, Groudhog Day, and Happy Death Day. Two years later, it remains one of my favorite movies, even if I do end up crying whenever I watch it.
The film begins with an ordinary teenager named Samantha Kingston (Zooey Deutsch) waking up on February 12th. We follow her throughout her day and watch her deal with family, friends, teachers, and all the drama that goes along with all of that. We meet her boyfriend, Rob (Kian Lawley) and we automatically know that she needs to dump his jock ass. (Whenever we hear him glibly say, “Love ya,” it’s like nails on a chalkboard.) We all know that Sam should be with Kent (Logan Miller), who is sweet and sensitive and gives her a white rose for Cupid’s Day. We also meet and get to know her friends, Allie (Cynthia Wu), Elody (Medalion Rahimi), and especially Lindsay (Halston Sage). While being a close friend to Sam, Lindsay is still the stereotypical popular, mean girl, the one who decides who is accepted and who is destined to forever to be an outsider. Sam, on the other hand, is not a mean girl (or, at the very least, she’s a not-as-mean girl). Instead, she’s the girl who simply goes along with what everyone else is doing. She may not instigate any bullying but she doesn’t do anything to stop it either.
February 12th was the night that Sam had been planning on losing her virginity to Rob but Rob pretty much ruins that by getting drunk and acting like an asshole. Instead, at a party at Kent’s house, Sam watches as Lindsay humiliates an outsider named Juliet (Elena Kampouris). After leaving the party, Sam, Lindsay, Elody, and Allie drive down a dark road. They listen to music. They talk about how stupid everyone at the party was. And, eventually, the car crashes and….
Suddenly, Sam’s waking up in her bedroom! And it’s February 12th all over again! That’s right, Sam is in a time loop, destined to continually relive the final day of her life until she makes things right. In the 2010 novel that this film is based on, author Lindsay Olivier makes it pretty clear that each time Sam relives her day, she’s going through another stage of grief, moving from denial to acceptance. While the film doesn’t make that point quite as clearly as the book, it does do a good job of showing us how, each time that Sam is forced to relive that day, she comes out of it as a changed person. She discovers that Rob wasn’t worthy of her love and that Kent was. She discovers that her family wasn’t as terrible as she assumed. And, perhaps most importantly, she learns that being a friend does not mean excusing casual cruelty.
Watching Before I Fall is always an emotional experience for me. A lot of it is because I can relate to Sam. In many ways, back in high school, I was Sam. But, even beyond that, the theme of Before I Fall is universal. It doesn’t matter how old you are or what your background may be. It doesn’t matter if you were popular in high school or if you were one of the outsiders. Everyone — every single one of us — has done something that they regret. All of us have one day that we wish we could travel back to and do things differently.
Well-directed by Ry Russo-Young and featuring a lot of beautiful Canadian scenery (the film was shot in British Columbia and Vancouver), Before I Fall is a poignant and touching film. Zooey Deutch, Halston Sage, Cynthia Wu, and Medalion Rahimi are all believable as longtime friends and, to the film’s credit, no one — not even Lindsay — can be reduced to a mere stereotype. Before I Fall is a film about regret, denial, anger, acceptance, and finally, peace. No wonder it makes me cry.
“We have to get ready. We have to fight.”
“We do … BUT NOT TODAY.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake! Will somebody please fight the goddamn saviors so that the damn show can move on to something other than tense stand-offs and rambling monologues from Negan’s goons!?
*sigh*
Okay, that’s out of my system. Let’s talk about the latest episode of The Walking Dead.
Judging from some of the response that I’m seeing online, a lot of people are proclaiming Bury Me Here to be one of the best episodes of season 7. I really can’t agree, though I will say that those who are saying that Lennie James was “Emmy-worthy” tonight are not incorrect. James had some great moments and it was nice to be reminded that Morgan is actually one of the more interesting characters on The Walking Dead.
For that matter, there was a lot of good acting on display tonight. Not just Lennie James but also Karl Makinen, who made you sympathize with Richard even if you couldn’t exactly blame Morgan for beating him to death at the end of the episode. The title’s episode came from Richard’s request and, by the end of the show, you did feel that Richard had earned the right to pick his own burial site.
(A lot of fans turned on Richard when, a few episodes ago, he suggested sacrificing Carol in order to bring Ezekiel in Rick’s war with the Saviors. Well, Richard shouldn’t have suggested that and yes, he did make some mistakes tonight. But goddammit, at least Richard was doing something other than growing melons.)
You know who else did a good job tonight? Logan Miller. He did a good job, even when the show’s script when out of its way to sabotage him. Has anyone ever been as obviously doomed as Miller’s Benjamin? From the minute Benjamin showed up tonight, we know he was dead. He offered to help out Carol. He looked up to Morgan. He had naive hope for the future. He had a girlfriend. He gave Morgan an uglyass painting for his uglyass room. Benjamin was so doomed and yet, Logan Miller brought at least a little bit of poignancy to his character’s obvious fate.
But, with all that in mind, tonight’s episode still moved way too slowly for me. It felt like a throwback to the first half of the season, before the show’s writers apparently realized how boring it was to have to sit through a new Savior monologue every week. There were hints of the show that we all want The Walking Dead to be. Even Morgan’s murder of Richard was a return to the unflinching yet plot-appropriate brutality that brought The Walking Dead its initial success. There were good moments but there were plenty of slow moments too.
Of course, that’s the way it’s almost always been with The Walking Dead. At the show’s best, the good moments are so good that they cause you to forget about the slow moments. At its worse, the slow moments are so slow that you give up on watching before the episode reaches the good moments. And then you have episodes like the one that aired tonight, where the good moments are good on their own and the slow moments are slow on their own and the whole thing never quite comes together. Tonight’s episode was a good thirty minutes stretched out to an average hour.
One final note — and I realize that I’ve said this a million times in the past and I’m probably say it a million times in the future — the Saviors are so fucking boring! Yes, I know that they’re bullies and they are properly hissable villains. You never feel anything but good when you see a savior die. But the show continues to act as if the Saviors are the most compelling bad guys since Milton inadvertently made Satan the most interesting character in Paradise Lost. Quite some time ago, I grew bored with various Negan lieutenants popping up, rambling on and on about tributes, and then demanding that everyone hand over their guns.
(That said, I am going to give some special credit to Josh Mikel, who, tonight, made Jared into the most loathsome savior of all.)
So, that’s why I say this: HURRY UP AND GET TO THE WAR! If Rick and Negan are not in the middle of an official war by the end of the season, I worry about the future of The Walking Dead….
Oh my God!
Is it possible that we’ve actually had two good episodes of The Walking Dead in a row!?
Indeed it is. In fact, I would say that tonight’s episode of The Walking Dead was the high point of the season so far. I don’t know if the show’s production team has been listening to the complaints that many fans had during the first half of the season but, with both this episode and last week’s, it’s hard not to feel that the show is trying to correct some earlier mistakes.
For instance, there was no Negan in this episode. Now, don’t get me wrong. Negan can be an intimidating bad guy. But, like many great villains, Negan is at his most effective when he’s off screen. The big mistake that the Walking Dead made during the first half of season 7 was going for an all-Negan, all-the-time format. With each appearance, Negan became just a little bit more cartoonish and, as a result, he became less and less intimidating.
However, though this episode largely dealt with people trying to figure out what to do about the Saviors, Negan was still kept in the shadows. As a result, Negan’s becoming a threat again.
Tonight’s episode followed two storylines, which is a definite improvement over the plodding pace of the first half of the season. Both storylines were equally interesting, though I think everyone’s heart was invested in Daryl and Carol.
So, let’s get Rick out of the way. Last week, I assumed that Rick had come across the Oceanside community but it turns out that I was wrong. (And that’s not a bad thing because the Oceanside community kinda sucked.) Instead, this is a community of people who live in a junkyard. In many ways, they’re just as ritualized and borderline ludicrous as Ezekiel’s Kingdom. The only question is whether or not the Junkyarders, like Ezekiel, realize how silly their little community is. Are all of their rituals designed as an escape from grim reality or are they all just crazy?
The Junkyard is run by Jadis (Pollyanna McIntosh), who seems to have a permanent smirk and who speaks like an evil Queen in an Italian Hercules film. But, and this is largely due to McIntosh’s performance and her chemistry with Andrew Lincoln, Jadis is still likable. When she and Rick finally formed their alliance, I was happy because Jadis looks like she’s going to be a valuable ally in the inevitable battle with the Saviors. Seriously, who doesn’t want to see Jadis kick Negan’s ass?
Of course, before Rick could talk to Jadis, he had to defeat an armor-covered walker that the Junkyard crew appeared to be using as a gladiator. That was exciting and it’s nice to see that The Walking Dead is trying to think up new things to do with their undead.
But, ultimately, this show was all about Carol and Daryl. Daryl has been hiding out at the Kingdom. When Richard told Daryl that he had an idea for how they could convince Ezekiel to go to war with the Saviors, Daryl was all ears until he discovered that Richard’s plan involved leading the Saviors to Carol. “She’s going to die anyway!” Richard exclaimed.
Obviously, Richard doesn’t know Carol!
After giving Richard the beat down that he deserved for underestimating Carol, Daryl went to Carol’s cabin and seriously, their time together was everything. For once, we got a moment of joy in this relentlessly grim series.
I always love the scenes between Carol and Daryl. I love the way that both Daryl and Carol drop their guard when they’re together. At its best, The Walking Dead has always centered around the question of how people can keep their humanity, even in the worst of circumstances. Tonight, Carol and Daryl provided that humanity.
This was a good episode, one that reminded me why I watch this show in the first place. Let’s hope that the rest of season 7 is just as good!
Well, The Walking Dead is back and again, I am going to try to watch and review each episode for the Shattered Lens. You may remember that I attempted to do this during the first half of season 7. I reviewed the first five episodes of the new season and then…
Well, how to put this?
I got bored.
Seriously, I tried to make excuses for the glacial pace of season 7. I kept telling myself that it was actually a brilliant narrative decision. I defended the controversial first episode and I’ll continue to do so. I enjoyed the second episode, largely because of the tiger. But, after that, I started to get bored. Each episode introduced us to a new community of boring people. Each episode featured a lot of conversation but little action. And what little action there was regularly interrupted by Negan popping up and screaming for half an hour. As much as I like character development and conversation, this is a show about the end of the world. There’s only so much time that I can spend watching Rick look depressed.
And so, after five episodes, I gave up on the first half of season 7. It was just too slow and the show was spending so much time on what a badass Negan supposedly was that the zombies had become an afterthought. Did season 7 really need a special 90 minute episode of Negan acting like a dick? I still watched the show but mentally, I checked out. And, judging by how the ratings cratered between the 1st episode (8.7 million viewers) and the 8th episode (5 million viewers), I was not alone in being dissatisfied.
But, in the break between the end of the first half of season 7 and tonight’s return, I’ve had time to recover. Today, as I debated whether to actually watch the new episode of The Walking Dead, I considered that this show has hit rough spots in the past. It’s never been a perfect show. I wasn’t a huge fan of season 1 and, in later seasons, I thought they spent way too much time at Herschel’s farm. But, in the past, when The Walking Dead has needed to deliver, that’s exactly what it’s done. In short, I decided to give The Walking Dead a second chance.
And, having just watched tonight’s episode, I’m glad that I did. Rock in the Road was a good episode. In fact, it may have been the best episode since The Well. There were still flaws, of course. As any true Walking Dead fan knows, this show has always been uneven. The Walking Dead is a gloriously imperfect show but, at its best, it’s the type of show that can almost make those flaws seem admirable. It’s easy to get frustrated with The Walking Dead‘s leisurely pace and rambling narrative. But, ultimately, that leisurely pace has also led to some of The Walking Dead‘s most resonant moments.
Much like every other episode so far in season 7, Rock in the Road told its story slowly but, at the same time, it at least had a destination in mind. Rick has finally snapped out of his self-pity and is now trying to build an alliance to fight Negan and the Saviors. As this episode showed, it won’t necessarily be easy. But, at least Rick is actually trying to do something!
There are several reasons why Rock in the Road was a noticeable improvement over the first half of the season. Here’s a few:
I was really happy with Rock in the Road. In fact, I’m happy enough to actually watch next week as well. Hopefully, this episode will be the start of season 7’s redemption.
The Stanford Prison Experiment (dir by Kyle Patrick Alvarez)
The Stanford Prison Experiment tells a true story. It’s important to point that out because this is one of those films that, if you didn’t know it was based on a true story, you would probably be inclined to dismiss as being totally improbable.
In 1971, Professor Philip Zimbardo (played in the movie by Billy Crudup) conducted a psychological experiment at Stanford University. A fake prison was built in the basement of a campus building, complete with cells and even a room to be used for solitary confinement. 15 students volunteered to take part in the experiment. For $15.00 a day, some of the students were randomly assigned to be prisoners while others got to be guards. The experiment was supposed to last for two weeks but Zimbardo ended it after 6 days. Why? Because the students had started to the take the experiment very seriously, with the guards growing increasingly sadistic towards their “prisoners.” Afterwards, many of the prisoner students claimed to have been traumatized while the guard students felt they were just playing a game.
(As one of the guards says in the film, “Am I still going to get paid?”)
The Stanford Prison Experiment tells the story of that controversial experiment and it is, at times, quite a harrowing experience. Interestingly, when the film begins, the focus is on the prisoners. I immediately noticed that Ezra Miller was one of the prisoners and, being familiar with his work in Perks of Being A Wallflower and We Need To Talk About Kevin, I naturally assumed that the majority of the film would revolve around him. After all, among the actors playing the prisoners, Ezra Miller was the “biggest name.” And, when the film began, it did seem to be centered around Miller’s likable and rebellious presence.
But then something happened. Miller faded into the background. In fact, all of the “prisoners” faded into the background and the actors became almost indistinguishable from each other. Instead, the film started to focus on one of the guards. Outside of the prison, Christopher Archer (Michael Angarano) is a laid back and rather amiable California college student. But, once he shows up for the night shift, Archer starts to talk about all of the prison films that he’s seen. He starts to speak in a Southern accent. He says stuff like, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” And soon, Archer is making the rules inside the prison.
In much the same way that Christopher Archer takes over the experiment, actor Michael Angarano takes over the film. While Zimbardo and his colleagues watch Archer’s actions with a mix of fascination and fear, the film’s audience becomes enthralled with Angarano’s intense performance. Wisely, neither Angarano nor the film allow Archer to turn into a cardboard villain. He’s not a bad guy. Instead, he’s playing a role. He’s been told to act like a guard and that’s what he’s going to do, regardless of whatever else may happen. The most fascinating part of the film becomes the contrast between Archer the likable student and Archer the fascist authority figure.
It’s frustrating that more people didn’t see The Stanford Prison Experiment when it was released in 2015. Considering the blind trust in authority that is currently so popular in certain parts of the American culture, The Stanford Prison Experiment is a film that a lot of people really do need to see and learn from.
The Tribe (dir by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)
Anyone who says that they truly understand everything that happens in the disturbing Ukrainian film The Tribe is lying. Taking place at a school for the deaf and exclusively cast with deaf actors, The Tribe is a film where everyone communicates in Ukrainian Sign Language and there are no subtitles. However, the actors are often filmed with their back to the camera and occasionally, their hands are out of frame so, even if you do know Ukrainian Sign Language, there’s still going to be scenes where you have no idea what anyone is saying.
And it’s appropriate really. The Tribe is a film about alienation and, by refusing to give us either an interpreter or subtitles, it forces the audience to feel the same alienation that the film’s characters have to deal with on a daily basis. It quickly becomes obvious that these permanent outsiders have created their own society and the least of their concerns is whether the rest of the world understands it.
What can be learned about the film’s story largely comes from the body language of the actors and the audience’s own knowledge of gangster movies, which is what The Tribe basically is. A new student at a boarding school for the deaf is recruited into a gang that deals drugs and pimps out two female students as prostitutes at a truck stop. When the new student falls in love with one of the girls, it leads to some truly brutal acts of violence, all of which are somehow made more disturbing by the fact that they take place in total silence.
(The talkative criminals of most gangster films allow audiences to focus on something other than the violence. When people talk about the opening of a film like Pulp Fiction, they talk about John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson talking about Amsterdam. They don’t focus on the guys getting gunned down in their apartment. In The Tribe, there are no quips or one-liners before people are hurt and we are forced to pay more attention to the consequences of brutality.)
The Tribe is made up of only 34 shots. The wide-angle lens forces us to consider these alienated characters against the barren Ukrainian landscape and the camera constantly moves with the characters, tracking them as closely as fate. Intense and dream-lie, The Tribe is a hauntingly enigmatic film. It’s not an easy film but it is a rewarding one.
Through the Shattered Lens 