MOVIE REVIEW: The last pieces of this puzzle thriller don't fit
does an impressive job of making the puzzles smart enough and deadly enough to keep audiences quite solidly gripped throughout. Or, at least, throughout its first two-thirds. At that point, what was once a tense and stripped down thriller gets massively stupid and increasingly less engaging.
Still, the first hour or so really does do its job very efficiently and is easy enough to recommend to fans of films like. Sure, it’s all very silly, the characters only have just enough possibility for us to a) tell them apart and b) even remotely care about what happens to at least some of them, and it’s not so much about story as it is about getting a kick out of these imaginative and ludicrously elaborate puzzles/ traps.
Director, Adam Robitel may well be “best” known for directing the behind-the-scenes documentaries of the Insidious series but he does a solid job here, building up the tension while showing a decent grasp of narrative in a film that doesn’t really have much of one. Credit also to screenwriters Bragi F. Schut and Maria Melnik for coming up with these increasingly bonkers escape rooms in the first place and giving us serviceable enough dialogue and characters.
Unfortunate, then, that after the trashy but undeniably entertaining delights of the first two acts of the film, it squanders most of the good will on a final act that makes the fatal mistake of trying to over-explain everything and, worse, set up a sort of mythology that is, at very best, just warmed up. It goes from pleasingly dumb to just annoyingly idiotic. Exciting to boring. Tense to tedious. And basically and fundamentally adequate to embarrassingly inept.
To be fair, the final act is so monumentally dumb that I would be lying if it didn’t elicit some of those rare eye-roll and giggle-with-incredulity combos, which can be kind of fun in their own way. This final section is not quite so good its bad as much as it is so bad that it’s kind of stupidly funny - while being boring and massively wrong-headed at the same time. It does undermine the first two thirds, to be sure, but it somehow doesn’t entirely ruin the movie.
South Africa Latest News, South Africa Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
John Vlismas doesn't care if his comedy about death kills the roomJohn Vlismas' favourite type of humour is what he calls 'horror's neighbour'. And you can expect plenty of it in 'The End', his one-man show about death
Read more »
Brighton stage great escape to reach FA Cup semis on penalties | IOLMillwall seemed to be on their way to the semi-finals of the FA Cup as they led 2-0 with two minutes of normal time left on the clock.
Read more »
Man sentenced to 15 years for robbery and escaping from custodyThe man stabbed a correctional services officer twice in the upper body while trying to escape.
Read more »
WATCH: Children escape Durban flat fire | Daily NewsFirefighters have extinguished a fire that broke out in a flat in the Point area
Read more »
CT paramedics escape unharmed after attempted armed robberyThe matter has been reported to police and an attempted robbery case was opened.
Read more »
Madonsela part of Zuma’s ‘engine room’ that led to ‘capture’, SACP alleges – reportThe SACP will tell the Zondo inquiry that Madonsela was among those who aided Zuma early on and were later appointed to top positions.
Read more »
Nádine catches Derick in bed with another woman in hotel roomAccording to Huisgenoot, Afrikaans singer Nádine walked in on her boyfriend Derick Hougaard in bed with another woman in a hotel room in Pretoria on 16 March.
Read more »
Guns, snares and bulldozers: Map reveals danger zones for wildlifeResearchers found a quarter of more than 5,000 threatened species have almost nowhere left to go to escape from the threats posed by human development
Read more »
Bloemfontein court sentences five men to lengthy jail terms for murderThe victim was apparently accused of stealing and was then trapped in a room while the house was set on fire.
Read more »