Parents' Guide to Escape the Field

This thriller almost works as a fun puzzle-box popcorn-muncher, but it borrows too many familiar elements from other movies and can't overcome its mechanical, artificial feel -- or its logic holes. The old "waking up with no memory of how you got there" scenario is always a nifty way to start a story, and Escape the Field gets that part right. But the moment the first two characters start speaking to each other, it sounds unnatural, i.e. clearly written dialogue. The most basic information -- such as Tyler telling Sam that he, too, has woken with no memory of how he got there -- is ignored in favor of vain attempts to create suspense.

On the other hand, the movie doesn't seem to be trying for suspense when the puzzles are solved. They occur in a dry, matter-of-fact way that makes them far less electrifying than the ones in, say, Saw or Escape Room. But the biggest flaw in Escape the Field is that the movie fails to convey the distance traveled or the passage of time. Night and day change places arbitrarily, and when one character must backtrack to obtain a crucial item, the journey ought to have taken days, but she returns in what seems like half an hour. And no one even thinks to check the corn itself as a potential food source for what seems like the first 36 hours. Last but not least, the monster is most disappointing, looking more like a dollar-store Halloween costume than anything blood-curdling. Bottom line? This movie is too lost to even be considered corny.