If the first Escape Room was a tight, silly-but-fun “Final Destination meets IKEA puzzle aisle,” Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is the overcaffeinated DLC pack nobody asked for but Sony released anyway.
It’s not unwatchable. It’s just the cinematic equivalent of someone saying, “Remember that thing you liked? What if we did it again but louder, dumber, and with lore from Wish-dot-com?”
Previously on… “We Should Have Just Gone to Therapy”
We pick up with Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller), survivors of Minos’s first murder-maze extravaganza. Zoey is still traumatized. Ben is still very attached to being alive. Their therapist gently suggests Zoey confront her fear of flying, and Zoey responds in the mature, healing way: she ignores that completely and decides to drive across states to personally attack a secret murder corporation with vibes, conviction, and exactly zero plan.
They arrive at what’s supposed to be Minos HQ in New York, find it conveniently abandoned and spooky, and within minutes get pickpocketed and lured into the subway like two people who have never seen a movie in their lives.
Guys. You survived industrial-strength death puzzles. How are you still this gullible?
The Champions: All-Stars of Bad Life Choices
Zoey and Ben end up in a subway car that separates and reroutes itself into yet another Minos funhouse. Surprise: this car is full of previous winners—other psychos lucky enough to survive earlier games. So now we’ve got:
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Zoey – anxious genius, morally offended by bad architecture
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Ben – reformed burnout, still mostly made of quips and trauma
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Rachel – influencer of suffering: she literally can’t feel pain
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Brianna – actual influencer, therefore naturally doomed
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Nathan – priest with survivor’s guilt and zero chill
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Theo – guy whose main job is to die first
Minos, apparently bored of regular victims, has decided to run an all-star edition. Who knew Saw’s Jigsaw had a corporate cousin more into brand consistency and themed design?
The opening “electrified subway car” room zooms by in a flash of:
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Sparks
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Screaming
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Poorly explained puzzle logic
Theo dies because somebody has to prove the stakes are real, and the movie barely has time to register that a human being just got fried before it’s like, “Cool, next room!”
Room 1: The Bank Heist Nobody Asked For
The group stumbles into a booby-trapped bank vault complete with:
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Laser grids
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Slowly closing doors
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The sort of “walk exactly in this pattern or die” puzzle that screams “designed by a bored intern with a graph notebook”
To its credit, this room at least feels like what the franchise is supposed to be: ridiculous, tense, and visually fun. The problem is that we already did the “elaborate puzzle room” thing in the last movie and better. Here, it’s fast, frantic, and just when you start feeling the tension, the scene ends like someone hit “skip ad.”
Also, Zoey keeps noticing the name “Sonya” plastered all over the place, like Minos suddenly got really into scrapbooking. The game is no longer tailored to each player’s trauma; it’s tailored to one random girl’s day out. Which is about as emotionally devastating as discovering the escape room is based on someone’s Pinterest board.
Room 2: Beach Episode from Hell
Next up: a postcard-perfect beach that quickly reveals itself to be made entirely of quicksand. It’s a fun idea on paper, but the execution is so rushed it barely registers as anything more than “whoops, we’re sinking again, my bad.”
Highlights:
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Nathan sacrifices himself to save Rachel, dramatically sinking beneath the sand like a priest-shaped Titanic
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Everyone screams
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The room’s Sonya theme continues in the background like a half-hearted Easter egg hunt
Once again, there’s no time to grieve, reflect, or even process. People die, and the movie treats it like losing pieces in a board game. “Ah well. Down a priest, moving on.”
Room 3: The City That Hates You
Zoey discovers an alternate way out of the beach room—because of course our girl refuses to go through the “official” exit like a normal lab rat. She, Ben, and Rachel start to head that way, but Ben falls into the sand, because gravity and plot convenience.
Cut to: Zoey and Rachel emerging into what looks like a city street. They’re briefly ecstatic—sunlight! Outside! Air that probably isn’t full of poison!—until acid rain starts melting everything and Brianna shows up screaming.
This room is actually one of the more creative ones:
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Periodic acid showers
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Frantic scrambles for shelter
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A taxi that doubles as the trapdoor to the next hell
Unfortunately, it’s also where the film fully embraces its favorite bad habit: “LOL, guess they’re dead now.” Zoey gets pulled downward into the next room, while Rachel and Brianna are locked out and dissolved like they angered the world’s most aggressive shower head.
Do we get a beat for the horror of watching two allies melt alive? No. We get more plot. This movie treats human death the way TikTok treats videos: if you don’t like it, just swipe to the next one.
Room 4: Lore Dump Nursery
Zoey lands in a child’s bedroom full of cloying decor and Sonya’s diary. Turns out:
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All the rooms are based on a fun day Sonya had with her mom
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Sonya’s mom is Amanda Harper (Deborah Ann Woll), the woman who “died” in the first film
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Minos faked her death, kidnapped her daughter, and forced her to become a puzzle designer
That’s right: Minos is not only a murder company, but also a kidnapper employer that runs on blackmail and emotional torture. So basically Amazon, but with more gas and fewer unions.
Amanda is dragged back into the plot only to:
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Suffer more
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Beg Zoey to take her place
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Do the emotional heavy lifting the script can’t be bothered to do
It’s a waste of Woll, and it retroactively cheapens the first film’s ending. Her dramatic sacrifice from movie one? Nah, she’s been doing unpaid overtime in hell designing giant sandboxes of trauma.
The Finale: Freedom (Terms and Conditions Apply)
Ben, who has been mostly presumed doomed since the beach, turns up trapped in a glass water tank, because Minos loves a good slow-drowning visual. Zoey refuses to play puppet, but she and Amanda MacGyver their way through the puzzle, free Ben, and escape the facility.
Shockingly, they actually get out. Like, out out. They:
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Go to the police
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Tell their story
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Watch the FBI investigate
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See the news announcing the exposed Minos operation
For a hot second, it feels like the movie grew a spine and decided to actually do something with the evil corporation concept. Zoey chooses to finally get on a plane home with Ben, symbolically facing her fear. Character growth! Resolution! We did it!
…lol, no.
The plane turns out to be, you guessed it, another escape room. Zoey recognizes her “therapist” as a plant. Gas floods the cabin. The disembodied Minos voice (who really needs a LinkedIn) mocks them for thinking they were out.
It’s like the movie physically cannot resist undercutting itself. Every bit of progress, every scrap of hope, is just bait for the next sequel. It’s less a story and more a content treadmill.
Extended Cut: Because This Needed to Be More Confusing
Just to make things extra chaotic, there’s an extended cut with:
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A totally different opening and ending
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New characters (hello, Isabelle Fuhrman and James Frain)
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A whole puzzle-maker backstory that rewires chunks of the plot
Deborah Ann Woll’s character vanishes entirely in that version, because why have continuity when you can just… not. The result is two competing versions of canon that both feel like half-baked season finales to a show that’s constantly threatening to be cancelled.
Final Verdict: Tournament of “We Get It, You Want a Franchise”
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions isn’t the worst horror sequel out there. The production design is fun, the cast is game, and some set pieces actually slap. But it’s also:
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Emotionally weightless
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Obsessed with retcons
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Allergic to closure
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Convinced “surprise, it’s all another game” is a personality
If you liked the first one and just want more elaborate death puzzles with zero attachment to anyone, you’ll probably have a good time. If you were hoping for:
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Deeper themes
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Real character arcs
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A satisfying confrontation with Minos
…this is less “tournament of champions” and more “tournament of executives insisting we leave the door open for Escape Room 3: Still Escaping.”
By the end, you’re not scared of Minos. You’re scared of Sony trapping you in an endless franchise with no exit—just an infinite series of rooms, each one labeled:
“SEQUEL HOOK – DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE.”
