Tag Archives: Trapped

Exit 8 Review

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It’s time for a horror title that came out recently. Exit 8 definitely delivers on the scares and especially hits hard if you are claustrophobic at all. I tend to not be great in small spaces but a train station is just large enough where I don’t think it would end up being a really big deal. As for clearing the challenges, well you better hope that you are really good at games.

The story starts with a guy getting on a train and noticing a young mother getting yelled at by a random guy. He stands by without doing anything and the same is true of everyone else on the train. He eventually gets to leave but then gets a call from his ex-girlfriend. She is pregnant and it seems to be his kid but she is unsure of what to do next. She is looking to the lead for some counsel but he’s not sure either which is not really helpful. Still, he says he will visit her at the hospital…but then he loses signal on his phone and suddenly there is no way out of the subway. There are 2 rooms that just keep on repeating forever and a sign on the wall which has some rules to follow. If he sees an anomaly, he must move backwards. If there is no anomaly, move forward. The rules sound simple but the game will prove to be difficult.

If you’ve played memory match games then that will be very helpful here. The subway station corridors are pretty uneventful. There are a number of posters and doors as well as a photo booth but that’s about it. Still, the changes can be really small things like doorhandles being in the wrong spot or the posters being a little more immersive than usual. Depending how paranoid you get by the end, you’ll also be fighting yourself. So there are a whole lot of variables to keep track of here.

Now there is a case to be made here for the game being a lot easier than the main character makes it appear. That’s fair because this guy does have asthma so he constantly runs out of breath and this makes it more difficult for him to move forward. Because of how small the distance is, most players would probably go at a quicker pace and try a lot of things before the slow and methodical approach that the lead does. I feel like you would only star to go crazy after doing the rounds for many, many times. It feels like the main character gets exhausted a little too quickly. Physically it makes sense but I’m talking mentally here.

Clearly he hasn’t played the kinds of video games that require you to grind for many hours at a time. It’s why on a serious note, it’s good to be prepared for those kind of situations because this is a trial that can be much easier if you are prepared for it. Now once the game stars to get close to cheating by summoning vicious animals and floods…well then that’s another story. So by that point you’re going to have to rely on some luck and plot armor. I guess you could just pick a direction and run to reset the room but that’s going to be a little unnerving. At least there doesn’t appear to be any rule that forces you to hurry so you can also just rest in a stable room for a while to get your energy up.

You don’t know that for a fact though so it’s possible that the rooms do have an invisible time limit and you would be doomed. It’s just impossible to say this for sure. As for how likable the main guy is, I thought he was decent at best. The guy is definitely a coward with how he didn’t step up at the beginning and even hesitates for a long time at the end. That said, the film is about his development so I would say that he has gotten better over the course of the film. He may not be a true standout by the end but he’s not bad.

The character cast is fairly small but we also have a girl who wanders the subways. Who is she exactly? Like with most of the film you can only speculate here. She was interesting though and did give one of the scarier moments of the film. For the most part the film is trying to scare you with its own concept as opposed to actual jump scares but there are a few exceptions to this. There is also the man who walks around the subway with a briefcase.

For the most part I thought he was okay. He had to deal with a pretty annoying teammate the whole time. The guy definitely did lose his cool by the end and fell for a really easy trap but at least had a decent mindset for the game. If he was by himself I think he would have maybe even lasted longer but probably would have fell for the trap. It’s why you should always play the game cautiously until you are sure about the win conditions.

As for the kid, well he’s got to be the weakest character. Yes he is a kid so you want to cut him some slack but being so quiet for most of the film was really not good. This is a situation of life and death after all so staying quiet really just puts you in a bad spot. Everyone has to do their part in order to try and escape this place alive after all.

I did appreciate how the film gives you just enough pieces to try and cobble the ending together on your own. There are quite a few plausible theories here. Is the main character still stuck in the loop or will it be broken by his action at the end? Does he have any relation to the man with the suitcase? If yes, then he must have a relation to the girl wandering there as well but if not then it appears to be a 1 victim at a time thing. Is the subway trap a moral trial for those who have made a big mistake in their life? The kid may suggest time travel or parallel worlds as well. Lots of fun theories to throw around there. I personally like the idea of full on time travel with 3 alternate versions of the lead but the theory does mostly fall apart around the little kid unless you realllllly stretch things. Probably makes more sense as a good and bad future but then the good one isn’t fully good because the kid went through a lot.

Well, theory crafting is fun at any time either way. The movie will keep your attention the whole time even though it is really just about people walking through a subway tunnel the whole time. Personally I could have done that for the full 2 hours. The only obstacle in the film that I didn’t care for were the rats with human parts. The special effects used definitely looked eerie but more in a gross way than in a scary one. I would have definitely skipped that part. I also think that this part and the flood just feel like the game cheating.

Maybe you could say that cheating makes the situation scarier and you could be right but it’s less satisfying. The idea of a difficult but fair game is much better because you still have the existential fear of never getting out but at least having a chance. You don’t want a rigged game where you know there is no way out. It doesn’t get to that point for the main character but there could be an implication that it would do that for the other characters. If you stick to objective rules then you don’t have to worry about that.

Overall, Exit 8 is a pretty solid film. I’d definitely recommend checking it out to anyone looking for a unique survival scenario. It’s a horror title that uses a lot of game elements and makes you wonder how you would perform. I may be a little overconfident but I think I’d do pretty well there. At the very least I wouldn’t be falling for the phone trap or talking to a random person in the hallway. The game would need to get a little more creative than that in order to take me down for the count.

Overall 7/10

Escape Room Review

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There are probably less than 10 horror films I’ve ever seen that got a positive score not counting creature features of course. This would be one of the few to make it as it was quite a bit better than I expected. The cast is actually pretty solid which is extremely rare for a modern horror title and the premise is utilized well. You can see the appeal of escape rooms after watching this although I’ve still never tried one.

The movie starts by introducing us to the 6 people who are going to get trapped. First there is the genius Joey who isn’t very good at hanging out with other people. She prefers to keep to herself. Well, one day her professor sends her a cube so that she can try out an escape room to pass the time by. She is supposed to try something challenging over the break as part of her homework so this makes sense. Next up is Jason who is a wealthy investor who probably isn’t using Robinhood so he won’t be frozen out of his sales. He doesn’t really need the $10,000 prize but is doing this for fun and since one of his best investors recommended he try it…the guy can’t say no.

There’s Ben who is at a pretty tough time in his life so he is eager to get some money. It’s all pretty simple to him, win the challenge and get $10,000. It’s similar for Mike who is a truck driver with a big family so he admits the money would be pretty helpful. There’s Danny who just loves escape rooms in general so he is eager to see if this one lives up to the hype. Finally there is Amanda who is the most mysterious of the bunch. We don’t know exactly why she is here beyond the fact that she got invited like the rest.

As you would expect, the 6 characters get stuck inside the room. They must now try to solve each puzzle before the various death traps wipe them out. If they don’t solve the puzzles quickly enough then they will be melted, squashed, and destroyed in short order. The main difficulty here will be working as a team. This is the kind of challenge that is meant to throw some tension in between the members. Survival is often your first instinct after all and all of these characters want to live. Plus they’re strangers so it’s not like they are attached to each other all that much. Can they survive this?

Horror films and survival thrillers usually go by fairly strict logic of over 50% of the cast must die minimum. If you have 10 characters starting off then 5 will due. If you have 6 then at least 3, etc. Part of the intensity here is always figuring out which characters will die and which will live. Of course that’s assuming that at least one lives but it’s extremely rare for everyone to die. That’s usually left for pure slasher films or supernatural entities like the Grudge. For a survival horror like this one you figure at least one would live…right?

Of course I can’t say who lives here. Still, I think what stands out about the film here is that the premise is actually pretty fun. The idea of everyone being stuck in a crazy puzzle house like this and having to escape is a real blast. Each character is tested to their limits and you feel like the puzzles are fair for the most part. You’re actually given opportunities to solve each one if you put your mind to it. I guess at most the only puzzle that seems like it would be a stretch to figure out was the one involving the medical equipment. That one didn’t seem very fair and balanced.

As mentioned, I also thought the characters and writing were pretty good here. Joey is a solid main character and her high intelligence was established early on in the film. She’s able to contribute quite a lot. Now, she does have a cheesy scene at one point in the film where she comes up with a plan. The plan really should not have worked no matter how you slice it since without plot armor that would be game over so even though it was kind of portrayed as she made the right call, I would disagree.

Then you have Jason who is the most confident member of the group. Even when someone dies he is ready to keep on moving. He certainly seems the most uncaring among the group but at the same time you do realize that each second counts here. Several times just 2-3 more seconds would have made the difference in each round. So every time when the characters want to stop and reflect on what just happened and hold a mini funeral in their heads, you can’t blame Jason ducking out of there. You can hardly blame the others for grieving either since it’s hard to just pick up and move out but it’s why Jason was tough.

Mike was another really fun character. He’s having as good as time as he can with this and is clearly a glass half full kind of guy. Mike’s not going to get depressed and he comes in handy with the fishing. He clearly doesn’t take well to be disrespected either so he keeps the others in line. Next up is Amanda who looks really good as well. She started off rather rocky but we gradually learn more about her character. Physically she can hold her own with any of the others as she has a lot of formal combat experience. Amanda’s another likable character here.

Then there’s Danny who loves Escape Rooms and video games as I mentioned. You feel bad for him the whole time because he’s probably the only one aside from Mike having any fun. As he said “I’m playing the funnest game but with the meanest people” which really sums up his experience here. The others are always insulting him or being sarcastic. Yeah, he’s a little slow to realize that this is for real and not just for fun but it is hard to realize that this whole thing is a scam.

The only bad character here would be Ben who is constantly raining on everyone’s parade. He goes into the games with a bad attitude and never gets better from there. Despite this being life or death he is never interested in helping out or doing anything like that. He really needs the money so you’d think he would be more interested in helping out.

Having good characters gives the film a nice dilemma. In a lot of other films you don’t care about which character survives because they’re all bad. Think of a film like “The beast must die” where every character is a cannibal or into evil practices or “I know what you did last summer” where every character was complicit in murdering an innocent guy by the road. You aren’t invested in seeing who survives because they’re all just that bad. Here you’re just waiting for Ben to be defeated but that’s about it.

As the film goes on tensions continue to rise of course so things aren’t very smooth for the characters. I also liked the scenery a lot. In particular the ice level really stands out. A lot of effort was definitely put into the backdrops. The upside down level was another fun one with the phone ringer being a signal for something to happen. Even the opening level modeled after an office building was a blast. The final level’s probably the most boring one since there’s no time to explore with the walls closing in but on the whole this was visually a very impressive film.

Overall, Escape Room was considerably better than I expected. Maybe it’s in part because this is a horror film that doesn’t feel like one. There’s not a bunch of excessive violence for no reason. The film doesn’t revolve around shock value twists. (There are shocking twists for sure but nothing that’s just there to be super insane) The characters are good, the writing is solid, and the visuals are nice. The whole challenge thing is also a really fun gimmick like Tower of God, Phy Brain, or other titles like that where you have to clear a challenge quickly or die. Even for franchises I’m not a big fan of like Hunger Games, I always like that kind of survival aspect when it’s handled well. The film’s ending is also pretty great so this really makes for a complete package. I’m hoping the sequel is able to keep up the momentum since this is a rather high bar to keep up with.

Overall 7/10