2019’s Escape Room was a surprise horror movie hit at the box office, earning $155 million worldwide on a $9 million budget. It was pretty fun, too, with a simple and enticing hook: “We solve the puzzles, or we die,” as one character says in the trailer for the sequel, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. You can watch it above.
Directed by Adam Robitel, Escape Room: Tournament of Champions brings back two survivors from the first film and pairs them with four new contestants. The stakes are more dangerous in the sequel (someone literally says, “This is way bigger than last time”), including an electrified subway, lasers, quicksand, and a crashing plane. “What we’re going to realize is that on any given day, there are multiple games happening all around the world,” Robitel told CinemaBlend about Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. “They’ve all played the game before. It’s a meditation on trauma, and how people deal with trauma. But also, what they’ve learned through their first trial by fire.”
Here’s the official plot summary:
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions is the sequel to the box office hit psychological thriller that terrified audiences around the world. In this installment, six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive… and discovering they’ve all played the game before.
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, which stars Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Isabelle Fuhrman, Thomas Cocquerel, Holland Roden, Carlito Olivero, and Indya Moore, opens on July 16.