This horror film/thriller has its virtues, but it badly strains viewers' suspension of disbelief and can't avoid feeling like Saw with duller teeth. The most fun parts of Escape Room are the occasional solvable puzzle and the detail and imagination in the sets. Production designer Edward Thomas (Doctor Who) is the MVP. And some of the performances, including Russell's sympathetic lead work, are good. But the movie is inconsistent in just about every other way. Some of the characters are drawn in detail, while others are thumbnail sketches leaning toward cliché. Some traps allow viewers to think along; others require information we're not given. And some are so implausible that they're likely to shake viewers out of the film. Its 10 Little Indians structure (picking off characters one at a time) and standard moral compass prevent the story from delivering significant surprises.

Plus, with its ultra-elaborate traps and unlikely amount of insider knowledge about the players, the movie can't "escape" comparisons to the much more violent, much crueler torture-porn franchise Saw. Escape Room is tailored for a younger audience, and it's certainly not as ugly as the gorier franchise -- and, thankfully, it has less of that series' bitter, faux moralistic overtones. There's some fun to be had, a few laughs, and a reasonable amount of tension throughout, with only a few jumping-out-of-the-cupboard startle scares. But predictable story beats and the movie's extreme reliance on suspension of disbelief keep Escape Room from rising too high above the genre.