ESCAPE ROOM received more than $150 million with a budget of $9 million, it’s no surprise why Columbia Pictures greenlit the second installment with a premise of rounding up the survivors to enter the next level of ESCAPE ROOM, similar to THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE. It’s revealed that Minos never let the contestants win their games, but things have changed since Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) successfully escaped.

At the end of ESCAPE ROOM, Zoey convinces Ben to accompany her on a mission to find Minos, the evil corporation behind the escape rooms, which Ben reluctantly agrees because he wants to repay her for saving his life.

They travel by car to Manhattan where Zoey believe it’s the location of Minos headquarters, but when they only find empty buildings. Zoey looks up on some kind of Street View showing images of workers entering the area two days ago. (I’m pretty sure that Google Street View doesn’t get update every day). While they are trying to find a way in, a homeless man approaches and snatches Zoey’s necklace.

They run after the thief into the subway, and find themselves trapped inside a Q train. Soon they finally realize that the train itself is an Escape Room created by Minos. All the passengers are the survivors of escape rooms.

The film moves forward at speed of sound, there are so many things going on, which leaves the audience little time to think or even question the logic behind every decision that any character makes. The rooms are more elaborated with better puzzles than the first film. There’s an electrified subway train where the contestants must find a way out before getting electrocuted.

The next room is a bank in art deco style with booby traps hidden in the floor which activates powerful laser beams, this is probably one of the best rooms in the series.

Then Zoey again thinks out of the box, she’s able to find another way to escape from a room. But this time, the creator already made a move one step ahead of her.

The production design is top-notch. The structure, the puzzles, and the clues make me want to explore those rooms (without time limit or instant kill booby trap).

The plot twist gives us a hint what it could be in the next installment if Columbia Pictures decided to make a trilogy, because we only get a glimpse of the infamous puzzle maker, but we still don’t know who actually controls everything behind the elusive corporation Minos.

ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS was first released in Australia on July 1, 2021, and was theatrically released in U.S. on July 16. The film is scheduled to release in Thailand on November 11.