When escape rooms became a thing, it was inevitable that escape room movies would follow. I found a dozen from the past four years without trying real hard. Most of them are titled Escape Room, so I didn't have to train a machine learning algorithm on IMDB plot summaries or anything. This might present a problem when you want to talk about the movie Escape Room, and someone asks which one you mean. Assuming, of course, anyone would ever have a reason to talk about escape room movies. Escape: Puzzle of Fear solves this imaginary problem by adding a few extra words to the title and featuring an actress who breaks her teeth on the scenery. If anyone asks "Which one is Escape: Puzzle of Fear?" you can say, "The one where Lili Bordán plays four reptiles in a human skin suit."

The movie opens with a group of players in an escape room. Lili Bordán is their host. They manage to escape at the last moment before the timer runs out. Bordán seems unhappy about their success. She makes some passive-aggressive remarks, but the players don't seem to notice. They just leave peacefully. I'm not sure what the point of this scene is. I guess it reaffirms that this movie is about an escape room, but it doesn't bode well for the levels of tension and excitement we can expect.

Next we meet the four main characters, a pair of dysfunctional couples who seem to despise each other but spend all their time together anyway. Matthew and Brittany have a lot of sex while Brittany barely conceals her disgust. Tyler and Angela have slightly less sex and are much more open about their contempt for each other. Eventually Tyler suggests they participate in a new escape room. And finally, a third of the way into the movie, the actual escape room part begins.

The escape room's theme is "crime and justice." Its storyline involves the murder of a young girl and the false accusation of her sister. A flashback implies that the story is based on something from the characters' past. Instead of one escape room, it's actually a series of rooms. One of them is a courtroom. A staff member playing a judge announces they should examine "Exhibit B." They find a videotape clearly labeled "Exhibit A" and decide this must be what she means. A random extra puts it in a VHS player and is immediately electrocuted. The cast pretends the tension is rising.

Right when Matthew and Tyler start to turn on each other, they get gassed. Matthew wakes up in a cell with Tyler and Brittany, both of whom are still unconscious. More flashbacks reveal that Matthew's some kind of serial killer. Eventually it becomes obvious that Matthew and Tyler killed the girl in the previous flashback, too.

Someone in a mask gets pushed into the room. Matthew assumes she's one of the staff and strangles her to death. Predictably, it was Angela. This is a movie with zero compunctions about telegraphing its surprises.

Brittany "wakes up" and dives into the exposition of the central "plot twist." Do I really need to tell you who Brittany is? I'll give you as subtle a spoiler as the movie itself does: she's the dead girl's sister. If they wanted it to be a surprise, maybe Brittany shouldn't have been having flashbacks about the murder. Her confrontation with Matthew ends when the police arrive. The denouement takes way too long for such a lousy payoff.

I'm not sure why Brittany thought this long con to get Matthew into an escape room would be a more satisfying comeuppance than just calling the cops in the first place. Posing as his girlfriend for all that time couldn't have been pleasant.

If you're looking for gore porn, Escape will sorely disappoint you. Same for action, suspense, mystery, and coherence. It's a shame Bordán disappears after the first thirty minutes. Her preposterous overacting is as close to entertaining as anything in this movie gets.

I originally thought I might watch several escape room movies and write a review of the worst one. Instead, I think I'll just assume I got it on the first try.

3 out of 10.

Seen on Tubi.