I watched two films over the weekend likely to be of interest to Bar types, and in lieu of the Bother’s Bar Film Club which on my list of things we’ll get round to doing one day, I thought I’d tell you about them.
Escape Room has just hit cinemas so check your local theatre for times. In it, some people with a very special connection are challenged to escape a hugely immersive escape room under the impression there’s a cash prize for whoever does. They don’t realise until they get in that is in, in fact, deadly.
What follows is about 60-70 minutes of fun and about 20-30 minutes where it turns a bit rubbish (and should probably carry an epilepsy warning). The writing isn’t going to win any awards, the characters are very broad stereotypes (The aggressive one! The higher functioning one! The millennial nerd! Etc!) and you won’t be finding the script very memorable either, however the set-ups are decently interesting in the main (the upside down bar room being a favourite) and the build-up and payoffs to each of the puzzles isn’t bad.
There is peril involved – yes characters die, sometimes horribly, but it’s not gruesome particularly – it’s not Saw. It’s not even Cube really, it’s Extreme Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. The ending is pretty open to the point where they could do a sequel if they wanted. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort of going to the cinema for, but it’ll certainly be worth a watch when it comes to streaming services.
I also watched Dave Made a Maze which has just come to UK shores after about 18 months in the US, we’ve mentioned it before. In it erstwhile loser Dave builds a cardboard deathtrap maze in his apartment whilst his girlfriend is away for a weekend, but the maze takes on a life of its own. What follows is a rather avant-garde 80-ish minutes with some brilliant set design and stop-motion, interesting ideas but characters I didn’t really care about to be honest and surprisingly I found myself losing interest, which is a pity. If you like films that play about with form though you’ll get something out of it.
I thought it was on Amazon Prime but that’s not the case, but you can set up a free week’s trial to Arrow Video’s channel through Amazon and then cancel it if you want. It’s also out on Blu-Ray and Google has it as well if you want to buy/rent.
You might need the dark arts, but here’s a short teaser for Million Dollar Mile:
https://youtu.be/FvuJqh6eJQ0
(Getting a big Run For Money vibe here…)
Speaking of games, here’s effectively an episode of Hunted played out on GTA.
I’ve been watching FailRace’s videos for years, and his Survive the Hunt videos are basically what Hunted would be if the hunters had rocket launchers and the fugitives could steal cars. My perfect TV show, then.
Funnily enough my sister put this on when I was round my Mum’s this evening – or least a different episode of it, a Check Point Survive the Hunt (the rules, Bloke is told rough grid co-ordinates of the checkpoints but not exactly where, has to change cars between checkpoints) and it struck me it was practically an episode of Run For Money and I was getting quite into it.
in video game news…. spike chunsoft just launched a…. unique viral campaign for the next game by the creator of zero escape, AI: The Somnium Files (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qARQz82CChc a murder mystery video game where you enter suspects dreams.) Specifically, they launched a youtube channel and twitter for one of the characters in the game, Iris sagan (or her online personality, A-SET) where people can interact with her.
https://youtu.be/eMj_GtoRPoE
https://twitter.com/Lemniscate_Aset
go follow her, perhaps she’ll foreshadow stuff in the game….
I went to watch Escape Room, sadly I nodded off between the bit where they arrive at ‘reception’ and the bar scene so need to rewatch at some point, just because I was knackered more than anything (Note to self:don’t go to cinema after a long day at work!). It seems they couldn’t decide what to do after all the escape rooms so just chucked everything including the kitchen sink into the film to fill the last half hour.
Obviously going to be a sequel when it only cost $9m to knock together (quite impressive, although I guess a lot of CGI) and has raked in almost $100m so far