Is Escape Room Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot
Yes, 5 out of 10. It's a tense puzzle game where the rooms are trying to kill the contestants.
🐱THE SCARE SIGNAL
SCARE SCORE
5 /10
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
DREAD LEVEL
Low
You will be fine by morning, though you may eye the next escape room invitation.
DOG
Dog: fine
none. No dog in this one.
Ruling: It is mostly puzzle rooms with a high body count, and it suits a group of teenagers.
Escape Room runs ninety-nine minutes. Six strangers accept an invitation to a puzzle game with a ten thousand dollar prize, and the invitation does not mention that the rooms are built to hurt them.
The premise, briefly
Six strangers each solve a puzzle box and win a spot in an escape room for a $10,000 prize, then find out that the game is real and the rooms are dangerous.
How much do you want to know?
🐱
The verdict above is spoiler-free. Everything below, including the ending, stays hidden until you pick a depth.
🐱CUT TO THE CHASE
How it ends
Only Zoey and Ben get out of the game, and they kill the Gamemaster on the way. Six months later, Zoey shows Ben that the others' deaths were staged as accidents, and they fly to New York to confront Minos.
The scene you're dreading
The frozen lake room, early on: Danny falls through the ice and drowns. It is the first time the game proves it is real.
The dog
There is no dog in Escape Room. A character mentions a dog that died.
Escape Room is a mean, fast puzzle thriller with a body count, and knowing the order of the rooms removes most of the guessing.
THE SHORT VERSION IS HIDDEN
How it ends, the scene you're dreading, what happens to the dog, and the bottom line. About twenty seconds to read.
What actually happens
A free oven for the whole waiting room
The movie opens on a young man named Ben falling into a room where the walls close in on him, then jumps back three days. A puzzle cube has been mailed to people across Chicago. Zoey is a physics student, Jason is a rich daytrader, and Ben works as a stockboy. Everyone who solves the cube is invited to a Minos escape room for a $10,000 prize. They meet in the waiting room of the Minos office with three others: Mike drives trucks, Amanda served in the Iraq War, and Danny is an escape room fanatic. Ben heads for the exit, and the waiting room turns out to be the first room, a giant oven. The second room is a snowy cabin with a frozen lake outside. This is the scene people dread first: Danny falls through the ice and drowns, which shows everyone the game is real. It happens early in the game.
The third room is a billiards hall turned upside down. Parts of the floor drop away every so often into a deep shaft. Amanda saves the 8 ball the puzzle needs, and she falls to her death doing it. The next room looks like a hospital, and its beds remind each person of something they survived alone. Mike lived through a mine collapse, Zoey a plane crash, Danny a carbon monoxide leak that killed his family, Amanda a bomb blast, Jason a shipwreck in freezing weather, and Ben a car accident that killed his friends. Zoey sees that every room copies one of those events, so the group was picked on purpose. She quits playing and starts hunting for an exit while the room fills with toxic gas.
Two doors, one defibrillator
The others figure out that they must reach a certain heart rate to get out. Jason tries to help with a defibrillator and shocks Mike to death by mistake. Jason and Ben get the next door open, but Zoey refuses to follow and stays behind. In the next room, a drug on a hatch seeps through the skin and poisons both men. Ben finds a dose of the antidote, and Jason attacks him for it. Ben kills Jason by accident in the struggle, then falls into the room from the movie's opening scene.
The audience has money on it
Ben gets out of the parlor by way of the fireplace and meets the Gamemaster. The Gamemaster explains that each group of players shares a theme, which the Puzzle Maker uses to build the rooms, and that wealthy viewers watch and bet on how the players do. He runs the game for them. Meanwhile, Zoey is not out of it: she breathed through an oxygen mask found in the hospital room, and she got out once Minos employees came in to clear the room. She arrives just as the Gamemaster turns on Ben.
The ending, explained
The Gamemaster attacks Ben. Zoey steps in, having survived the toxic gas with the oxygen mask in the hospital room and gotten out once Minos employees came in. Together they kill the Gamemaster and escape. When Zoey returns with the police, the building looks abandoned and every trace of the game is gone. Six months later she meets Ben and hands him newspaper clippings about the other players' deaths, all staged to look like accidents. The Minos logo also hints at a building in Manhattan, and Zoey plans to fly to New York and confront the company. Ben agrees to come. In the last scene, flight attendants on a plane in trouble solve a puzzle to reach the cockpit, but they are too late and the plane crashes. It is a mock plane Minos is using to test a new room for Zoey and Ben's flight.
The post-credits ruling
There is no post-credits scene. You can leave when the credits start.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: none. No dog in this one.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is Escape Room scary?
Yes. Escape Room is a 5 out of 10 with low dread. It is tense and mean, mostly puzzle rooms with some injuries, and most teenagers can handle it.
How does Escape Room end?
Zoey and Ben are the only survivors of the game, and they kill the Gamemaster. They then learn that Minos staged the other deaths as accidents, and the movie ends with them heading for New York and another Minos trap.
Does the dog die in Escape Room?
There is no dog in Escape Room, so none dies. A character mentions a dog that died.
Is there a post-credits scene in Escape Room?
No. Escape Room has no post-credits scene, so you can leave when the credits start.
Who runs the escape room in Escape Room?
A company called Minos runs it. A Gamemaster oversees each game, while a Puzzle Maker builds the rooms around a theme, and wealthy viewers watch and bet on whether the players survive.
BLURRED FOR YOUR PROTECTION
The whole plot of Escape Room is hidden, ending included. It stays that way until you ask.
Escape Room is ninety-nine minutes of rooms that want you dead. Install Scaredy Cat and it will blur horror like this before you see it, so you can read the plot from outside the oven.
