Prime Time: Follow Me (2020)

Writer-director Will Wernick may be a name familiar to you if you made the decision a few years ago to watch one of the other movies titled Escape Room, but not THE better Escape Room. Follow Me is, funnily enough, another movie based around an escape room experience. It’s worse than either of the aforementioned escape room movies though, which makes me think it is time for Wernick to stop crafting movies around that concept  

Keegan Allen plays Cole, the kind of narcissistic social media “superstar” I loathe. He spends his time accepting various challenges, staging various pranks, and generally doing what social media people do. Hus latest adventure is going to be his best yet, thanks to a friend who has hooked him up with a Russian contact who will get them into the ultimate escape room experience. It isn’t long until things become much more dangerous than expected though, which leaves Cole and co. fighting to stay alive.

Follow Me is just bad, and it’s bad from start to finish. It isn’t incompetent. It isn’t too boring (well, depending on how patient you are once you guess where things are heading). It’s bad. The core idea already feels far too tired and overdone, the cast aren’t good enough to sell most of their scenes, and I get the sense that Wernick feels as if he is being smart and playful for most of the movie, despite it all being tiresomely predictable and dumb.

Although I didn’t like his character, Allen does okay in the lead role. I believed him anyway, which is more than I could say for a couple of the cast members playing his friends, and let’s not start on the many actors cast from the Stereotypical Russian Thug Casting Agency. The fact that I didn’t care about anyone, good or bad, meant that I didn’t care how things ended, although I did start to hope for the film to end in a way that would actually surprise me (which Jr didn’t manage).

I guess some people might enjoy this. If you are desperate enough for another thriller set in an escape room environment then this might just scratch that itch. The traps aren’t well-designed, there’s never any real tension, any attempted commentary on social media videos/audiences does not work, and the end credits just underline a sense of utter pointlessness.

Those who follow me for movie recommendations should avoid Follow Me. All the basic elements are in place, but nothing really clicks. Ironic, as the central character is all about the clicks.

3/10

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Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions (2021)

I enjoyed Escape Room. I also enjoyed Escape Room. And I will enjoy any number of films that feature escape rooms at the heart of their plot, as I have said before. It’s a cool concept, and the films often allow you to expect some gory death moments while “playing along” with the main characters.

The plot to this is very simple. After the events of the first film, Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) set out to find the creators of the dangerous game they were caught up in. They want justice to be served. That ends up with them dragged into more escape rooms, this time alongside other survivors (hence the title). An underground train, a bank, a seaside shack, and even a scene that looks like any number of NYC streets are all scenes full of puzzles they have to solve before the timer runs out.

There are a lot of people who worked together this time around to get the screenplay done, so I will just mention the returning Maria Melnik. While it may seem like far more bodies than necessary, every individual scenario is enjoyably intricate in the slotting together of the puzzle pieces so I cannot complain about more brainpower being used to focus on the fun extended set-pieces.

Director Adam Robitel is back in the big chair, and he sticks with the approach that served him well enough in the first film. Show the room, let the camera pick up small details, hone in on different clues as the players agonise over their next move. You get secret switches, deadly lasers, electric shocks, “quicksand”, acid raining down, and much more, and Robitel almost always shows a small effect of these elements before preparing for at least one major death.

Although the focus is always on the rooms themselves, both Russell and Miller acquit themselves admirably enough in their roles. Holland Roden, Indya Moore, Thomas Cocquerel, and Carlito Olivero also do fine, although it’s Roden standing out from the other players. Then you have scenes featuring Isabelle Fuhrman and James Frain that attempt to frame the whole story in a way that is pretty unnecessary. Look, I appreciate trying to show that there actually is someone creating these puzzles, but the logic of the movie has already asked me to switch off my brain and not overthink it, considering just how much money and resources would be needed for each scenario, so shoehorning in some backstory at this point does more harm than good.

As expected, this wasn’t quite as good as the first film. It’s not bad though, and certainly not bad enough to dissuade me from watching any other movies that use the idea, or even the same title. They may not be amazing, or stuffed with surprises, but they are enjoyably unpretentious and entertaining.

6/10

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