Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is a sequel that knows exactly what it is. It is a bigger, louder, more expensive version of the same trick: six strangers trapped in a series of deadly rooms, each one designed to eliminate them until one survives. The trick is that none of them want to be there. They are all winners of previous escape rooms, survivors of the same company’s torture, and they have all played this game before.
Taylor Russell returns as Zoey Davis, the woman who escaped the “sole survivor” rooms in the first film. She drags Ben Miller back into the fray after finding coordinates to the Minos Corporation’s New York City headquarters. The setup is simple: Zoey and Ben break in, get chased by a vagrant named Matt Esof, and end up sealed on a Q subway train that separates from the main line and heads to a remote station. That station is the first room, and it is electrified.
The film spends its runtime doing what the first film did, only with more spectacle. Each room is bigger, more elaborate, and more deadly. There is a bank with a slowly closing vault and a laser security system. There is a postcard-like beach covered in quicksand. There is a final confrontation that brings the whole thing to a close. The puzzle mechanics are elaborate, involving subway tokens, complex routes, and timed escapes. The film is at its best when it is purely mechanical, when the rooms demand thought and the tension is earned through design rather than noise.
But the problem is that the rooms themselves are the same kind of rooms. The first film worked because its rooms felt personal, each one tied to the individual trapped inside. This sequel leans on a larger, more corporate scale. The rooms are about winning and losing, about being the best, and about the corporation that runs them. That shift means the stakes feel less human. Zoey and Ben are still trying to survive, but the people around them are mostly strangers, not friends, and the film does not spend enough time making us care about them.
The cast is strong. Russell and Logan Miller carry the lead, and they are backed by Holland Roden, Indya Moore, Thomas Cocquerel, and Carlito Olivero. Each of the six survivors has a background tied to their past escape room: priests, influencers, people who cannot feel pain. These details add color, but they do not add depth. The film moves too fast to let any of them breathe. The supporting cast is wasted, and the story’s central question — why these particular people are chosen — is left mostly unanswered.
There is an extended cut that adds a different opening and ending, plus a different story with Isabelle Fuhrman and James Frain as Claire and Henry, the puzzle maker, and Tanya van Graan as Sonya, Henry’s wife and Claire’s mother. That cut exists outside the theatrical release, and it offers a fuller picture of the corporation’s history. It is worth seeing if you are curious about the back story, but it is not essential to the experience.
The film’s biggest flaw is that it fails to improve upon its predecessor. The rooms are bigger, but they are not better. The stakes are higher, but they are not sharper. The film is loud, glossy, and confident, but it is also hollow. It is a machine built to deliver thrills, and it delivers them efficiently, but it never asks the audience to think beyond the next door or the next trap.
| Film | Rooms | Scale | Central Question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Escape Room | Personal, individual | Small, intimate | Why me? |
| Escape Room: Tournament of Champions | Corporate, competitive | Large, elaborate | Why us? |
The comparison is stark. The first film was about fear. This one is about spectacle. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a different thing, and the film does not acknowledge the difference.
The film is not a failure. It is competent, well-made, and often tense. But it is also a sequel that repeats itself without evolving. The rooms are impressive, the cast is capable, and the premise remains compelling. None of that is enough to overcome the film’s refusal to engage with what made the original work.
The film’s tagline promises that winning was just the beginning. That is true, but the film does not follow through on the promise. It is content to repeat the formula and hope the size of the rooms carries it. They do not.
4.8 out of 10.
- Title: Escape Room: Tournament of Champions
- Director: Adam Robitel
- Writers: Will Honley, Maria Melnik, Fritz Böhm, Christine Lavaf, Oren Uziel, Daniel Tuch
- Runtime: 88 minutes
- Release: July 1, 2021 (Australia), July 16, 2021 (US)
- Box office: $66 million
- Critical score: 4.8/10
The film is a solid, if forgettable, entry in a franchise that has never been subtle about its intentions. It is a good time if you go in expecting a good time, but it is not a good film.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
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