Review: ‘No Escape’
Horror movies have had a lot on their mind lately. More concerned with dissecting our innermost fears and exploring social and cultural anxieties than simply entertaining viewers, we have entered a new age of horror, one that is more fascinated by the devil we know than the one that we don’t. Directed by Will Wernick and featuring a cast made up of teen show staples, ‘No Escape’ is a firm outlier, harkening back to the days of ‘Final Destination’ and ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’.
‘No Escape’ centers on social media personality Cole (Keegan Allen), his girlfriend Erin (Holland Roden) and his friends Thomas (Denzel Whitaker), Dash (George Janko) and Sam (Siya) who, after receiving a personal invitation from Russian trustfund baby Alexie (Ronen Rubinstein), travel to Russia in order to celebrate Cole’s 10 year anniversary of being a social media star.
The group arrives in Russia for what seems to be an all-expenses-paid trip and the promise of a unique escape room experience solely designed for Cole to document to his 17 million followers. After an incident with in a nightclub, things start to take a turn for the worse and their custom escape room experience may not at all be what it seems.
Playing out like a less-gruesome ‘Hostel’ filtered through the teen horror lens, ‘No Escape’ has a pretty straightforward plot and a clear destination in sight that it reaches without taking any shortcuts or stopping for any pitstops. With a relatively low-key first act, ‘No Escape’ takes awhile to get going but once it does, it never lets up, taking viewers on an unrelenting thrill ride that ends with a conclusion you won’t see coming.
While ‘No Escape’’s ill-timed attempts at humor fall short and its characters are mostly underdeveloped and one-dimensional, the film is more than watchable thanks to a game cast who are in on the fun. ‘Pretty Little Liars’ star Keegan Allen is charming and charismatic as an obnoxious social media personality with a hidden side to him, while ‘Teen Wolf’ star Holland Roden does her best to elevate what little material she has to work with. Despite a shoddy attempt at a Russian accent, Ronen Rubinstein is perfectly cast as a spoiled rich kid who has everything handed to him on a silver platter.
While it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, ‘No Escape’ is a fun, more than watcheable thriller that provides a more-than-welcome reprieve from today’s “elevated horror” fare.
Rating: 3/5
No Escape is now available on VOD.