“A friend of mine once played a drinking game with Christopher Nolan’s 2000 reverse-order mystery movie Memento, where he would pause the movie at the start of each scene, and a group of friends who’d never seen it would try to guess exactly what would happen next.
“No one was ever right, but whoever got closest would be spared a drink. This seems like the ideal way to watch 2019’s Escape Room, a relentlessly enjoyable movie about people trying to survive a series of deadly escape rooms.
“The movie is full of puzzles for viewers to guess along with, and while they may never anticipate the solutions, there are always enough clues to make guessing fun.
“So the newly released sequel, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, seemed like the perfect opportunity for smarter contestants and more devious traps.
“Instead, the sequel abandons clever mysteries in favor of more straightforward action-horror, losing some of what made the original special in the process.”
Read more at Polygon