Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is the sequel to the box office hit psychological thriller that terrified audiences around the world. In this instalment, six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive…and discovering they’ve all played the game before.
The film stars Taylor Russell and Logan Miller. Directed by Adam Robitel. Produced by Neal H. Moritz.
In 2019, movie audiences lined up to lock themselves into a room that they couldn’t leave, with certain danger looming… but this danger was coming from inside the room. The worldwide popularity of escape rooms – which pit players’ creative problem solving and puzzling skills against a ticking clock and a locked door – whetted the appetite for Columbia Pictures’ Escape Room, which became a global hit.
Now, as Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller), the two survivors of the Minos Corporation’s twisted game, begin a quest to expose the company for their murders and evil, they will find themselves lured back for more deadly fun in Escape Room: Tournament of Champions… where will be joined by other survivors.
And with Minos bringing together a group of players who had already survived their challenges, it would be up to the filmmakers to create exciting and tricky new problems for the characters. “The idea of “Tournament of Champions” inherently raises the stakes,” says producer Neal H. Moritz. “All of our characters have not only played before, but won, so they’re experts at solving puzzles and spotting clues. We had to create rooms that would believably surprise and challenge them, but I think the most exciting idea we introduce is that the game isn’t confined to conventional rooms – it can take place anywhere.”
Of course, the challenge for the filmmakers was to outdo themselves. “In the first film, we killed people with all the big ones,” says director Adam Robitel, who returns to helm the sequel. “We used fire, cold, gravity, poison gas, and at the end of the film, hinted that the corporation was going to hijack a plane. This time Minos is raising the game and the set pieces had to go one step further.”
That extra creative energy is what fans now expect from this franchise, which breaks out of its genre. “The Escape Room movies are more psychological thrillers than horror,” says Robitel. “The pressure of real-life escape rooms is the ticking clock – you have only one hour to solve all the puzzles and get out. We’ve leaned into that as an obstacle to make the film more sophisticated – more suspense as opposed to shock and gore.”
The Escape Room: Tournament of Champions releases in South Africa on the 27th of August 2021.