If you’re looking for a heart-pounding, suspenseful way to spend an evening, you must check out the best escape room movies. These edge-of-your-seat thrillers will have you trying to piece together clues and solve puzzles along with the characters on screen. And, once you’ve seen one, you’ll be hooked. If you take any escape room puzzle movie, it is filled with thrill and excitement.
The “Escape Room” movie series is about a group of five strangers who find themselves working together to get out of a series of dangerous and elaborate puzzle rooms. If anyone can’t get out, they’ll die. The sole player who survives the rooms to the end is the winner. There are puzzles and death traps galore!
You’ll love these psychological thrillers if you’re a fan of movies such as The Cube, the saw movies, Fermat’s room, or the Netflix series Squid Game. Real-life popular breathing room games heavily inspire them but with a twist–the players are in life-and-death scenarios instead of just trying to figure out how to get out of the rooms for fun.
So without further ado, let’s get started.
Escape Room Movies in Order of the Release Date
- Escape Room (2019)
- Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)
Escape Room (2019)
The first movie is the 2019 film “Escape Room,” a heart-pounding thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. The movie follows six strangers invited to participate in a mysterious escape room challenge. These are some of the best escape room films ever made.
Six people from various backgrounds–Zoey, a physics student; Jason, a wealthy day trader; Ben, a stockboy; Mike, a truck driver; Amanda, an Iraq War veteran; and Danny escape room enthusiast–are presented with a puzzle cube. When they solve the challenge, each is invited to participate in an escape room attraction event for $10000.
After the entrants arrive at an office building with no welcoming committee, Ben tries to leave and finds that the door handle falls off. They escape the first two rooms – a giant heating oven and a winter cabin – but each successive panic room becomes increasingly deadly after seeing the key.
In a freezing chamber, Danny drowns; Amanda plummets to her death in an upside-down billiards bar, where sections of the floor drop into a deep shaft below; In a hospital room filled with poisonous gas, Ben kills Jason by using electric shocks. Ben uses escape optical illusions and strobe lights to kill Jason.
The film is heart-pounding and suspenseful. The acting is excellent, and the characters are believable. The production value is high, and the puzzles are clever.
The film was a huge box office success, grossing over $155 million with a budget of only $9 million. This is the perfect movie if you have friends who love escape rooms and movies.
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021)
The second part of the series was released in 2021; This American horror film is a sequel to 2019’s Escape Room. It was directed by Adam Robitel and written by Will Honley.
Maria Melnik, Daniel Tuch, and Oren Uziel. Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, and Deborah Ann Woll reprise their roles from the first film. New cast members include Indya Moore, Holland Roden Thomas Cocquerel, and Carlito Olivero.
The story follows when Zoey Davis and Ben Miller confront the shadowy organization after locating clues to its New York City headquarters to escape the “sole survivor” rooms organized by the Minos Corporation.
Zoey’s therapist encourages her to move on from her trauma and overcome her aerophobia, but she chooses to drive instead of fly with Ben.
When they enter the estate, Zoey and Ben discover it abandoned. They are accosted by a vagrant who steals Zoey’s necklace. She and Ben give chase into the Q subway train, which sends them plunging straight into its tunnel.
Their train car becomes separated from the rest of the train and is redirected to a distant station, trapping Zoey, Ben, Rachel, Brianna, Nathan, and Theo inside.
As the passengers realize in horror that they are again in Minos’ deadly game, the train becomes electrified. Zoey and Ben learn that the others are the “winners” of previous escape rooms, having survived them.
To escape, the group must collect subway tokens as the electrification increases. Theo is killed while trying to help protect Brianna, who falls behind; however, she manages to get back on track and make it out with everyone else.
The film was not as successful as the previous part grossing only $66 million against its budget of $15 million.
If you love escape room films, you will enjoy the 2nd part too. However, the story also is not as good as the first part. It is a cheap horror movie with bad acting and even worse CGI. The story is not scary, and there are no real suspenseful moments. However, if you like escape rooms and want to see how they are done in a movie, this is the film for you.
Escape room movies, in general, are a great way to get your adrenaline pumping and have some fun with friends. We recommend the first film in the series if you are looking for a good escape room movie. However, if you are only interested in watching an escape room movie for seeing one, the second film is worth watching.
There are many other great thriller movies with the same concept of an escape room, but these are the two most popular ones.
FAQ about Escape Room Movies
Is there a 3rd movie for Escape Room?
Escape Room 3 is starting to look like it won’t be successful, especially after the second movie in the series, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions didn’t perform well at the box office when it was released in July 2021.
What order should I watch Escape Room?
There are two movies and an extended cut; you can watch them in any order.
We recommend the first film in the series if you are looking for a good escape room movie. However, if you are only interested in watching an escape room movie for seeing one, the second film is worth watching. There are many other thriller movies with the same concept of an escape room.
Are there any other movies with escape rooms?
Yes, there are other movies with escape rooms, with a similar concept to people being stuck in a room and figuring out a way to escape. However, these are the two most popular ones.
Other similar movies include The Cube, Saw, and The Game, where you can find a list of different escape room movies here.
- Cube (1997)
- Saw (2004)
- Saw II (2005)
- Fermat’s Room (2007)
- Breathing Room (2008)
- Jigsaw (2017)
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