No Escape 4K 2020 Ultra HD 2160p

Storyline
A social media personality travels with his friends to Moscow to capture new content for his successful VLOG. Always pushing the limits and catering to a growing audience, they enter a cold world of mystery, excess, and danger. When the lines between real life and social media are blurred, the group must fight to escape, and survive.

User Review
Honestly, I didn't expect to like this movie as much as I did. I've seen a lot of bad horror movies, and I didn't think the writer/director's previous movie Escape Room was all that strong in the script department. I also read almost nothing but negative reviews for this movie and just wasn't expecting much. But I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

The cinematography looks nice, and the acting is really solid all around. Keegan Allen gives a great performance as the lead. That last scene - chills. You can really feel for his character.

The dialogue is also good. There were actually a few moments where the dialogue was surprisingly organic, and you really got the sense that these characters have been good friends for a long time. There's a couple of cheesy vlogger lines that are generic and played up, but that's kind of the point, and for the most part those few vlogging scenes work well. The social media overlay was also well done, clean, and easy to digest. Additionally, there are some Easter Eggs if you know what you're looking for. Cole is following several people from the production of the movie like Will Wernick and Jeff and Kelly Delson. I thought that was a fun touch.

I saw some critique of the lack of subtitles. There was a significant amount of Russian in this film and not a word is captioned. Personally, I didn't mind. You can basically understand what they're saying just through context - or so it seems at least. I admittedly don't speak Russian.

I've also seen people say that the plot is unoriginal and a bad rip off of Saw, Hostel, etc. While some of the escape room torture puzzles are familiar, there's a lot from this movie that I haven't seen done in exactly the same way before. I actually thought the plot for this movie was fairly strong, much better than Wernick's previous Escape Room (to which this movie bears little resemblance, despite involving escape rooms and previously in production being titled Escape Room: Moscow). There's some good twists, and the plot keeps its suspense through most of the movie. The pacing was fine for me.

I won't get into spoilers, but there are some logistical plot holes that end up not making much sense. By the end of the movie, you spend a lot of time reflecting and going "Wait, how did they know/do/expect that?" and that brings my review down a couple stars. But it's nothing egregious as I've seen some people complain about. It's your standard horror movie bad logic, which is seen enough to be tolerable by people who spend a lot of time watching the genre.

Overall, this is actually a solid movie. It's not my movie of the year or anything, but it's a decent thriller that put a new spin on the genre and did it pretty well. I'd recommend it.