The highly anticipated sequel to 2019’s Escape Room is less than two months away!  And in preparation, Columbia Pictures just released the first trailer for the aptly titled Escape Room: Tournament of Champions!

Best of the Best
Following in the footsteps of The Hunger Games, this sequel appears to be creating a new game populated solely by previous survivors.  Featuring the very same scene of Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) at the end of the first movie, the trailer picks up with them teaming up to take on the shadow organization behind these escape rooms.

However, they find themselves in the game once again with other people who have played before.  The brief few minutes of footage provided does a great job of showing off some of the unique and creative landscapes and settings that the games take place in.

Without a doubt, the most interesting component of the first one were the rooms themselves.  The games had the brutality of Saw, the complexity of the Riddler, and the amazing production design that usually only comes with studio horror.

That production design is on full display in the new trailer with escape rooms based around an electrified subway car, an artificial beach, and an indoor replica of a NYC street that manages to fool everyone.

Part of what made the first movie so enjoyable was seeing these detailed environments and imagining what we might do in them, and it looks like that element will be present in Tournament of Champions as well.

More of the Same?
While the glimpses we get the new rooms look absolutely amazing, this sequel could very easily fall into the trap of essentially just redoing the original.  The ending of the first movie demonstrated just how dangerous and connected this organization was with how they disposed of the dead players in “random” accidents, and seemed to be tracking Zoey and Ben even after they won.

Its sequel was always going to include another round of escape rooms, which is very welcome, but hopefully it continues to delve into that subplot of who’s behind the curtain.  Doing so would add to the overall mythology and help set this movie apart from its predecessor.

The trailer itself really only shows the games, but that was always to be expected.  While we do see little glimpses of bad things happening to the players, the trailer does a pretty good job of not spoiling much about the fate and outcome of each character, like so many other horror movie trailers tend to do (we’re looking at you Blumhouse).

What are your thoughts on Escape Room: Tournament of Champions?  How did you like the original movie?  Let us know in the comments!

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions releases in theaters July 16, 2021

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