SyFy vs The Mynd: No Escape Room (2018)

The car of a squabbling father/daughter duo (Mark Ghanimé and Jeni Ross) breaks down somewhere in small town USA. Because these things can take their time, they decide to search what goes under “excitement” in the area while their car is being repaired. As it happens, there’s an escape room happening in town, so our protagonists soon find themselves teaming up with three other poor horror film victims, solving puzzles and encountering increasingly peculiar things in a somewhat creepy old house.

In these sad, post-Sharknado times, when seemingly all of the handful of SyFy Originals still produced in a year apparently need to be “ironic” and/or about sharks, or are so atrocious I can’t even bring myself to write them up most of the time, Alex Merkin’s No Escape Room feels like a breath of fresh air by sheer virtue of being none of the above things. Instead it is a simple, yet slick looking little low budget movie that goes through with its basic concept from beginning to finish in a convincing and professional manner. That sounds like I’m damning with faint praise again, but really, giving the SyFy Original movie output of the last few years, being a film that’s actively avoiding being crap is something of a triumph. Why, when watching this, it’s not difficult to believe that Merkin and writer Jesse Mittelstadt actually care about their audience having a good time watching this. Sure, elements of the film feel a bit like a lite version of “No End House”, but there’s nothing wrong with borrowing from the good stuff.

While it probably won’t rock your world, this little film is well realized on a craftsmanship level, using the artificiality of escape rooms and their structure well to pace its plot and get its characters to interact naturally, slowly escalating things into a somewhat weirder direction. Merkin’s directorial style is slick enough to mostly play over the fact that most of his film is taking place in only a handful of small rooms, and he certainly knows how to introduce weird elements to the plot with small gestures. Personally, I’m also rather fond of how little direct explanation No Escape Room gives for the nature of its supernatural threat, but then I’m also sure that’s an element of the film that’ll drive viewers with different tastes batty.


Me, I had quite a bit of fun with this one, and when was the last time I could write something like that about a new SyFy movie?

In short: Altitude (2017)

FBI hostage negotiator Gretchen (Denise Richards) has just been demoted to a desk job in Washington for preventing a bloodbath. Her flight to Washington isn’t going too great, either: her nice/slimy seat neighbour Terry (Kirk Barker) has stolen rather a lot of money from his backstabbing partners, said partners being his ex Sadie (Greer Grammar) and one Sharpe (Dolph Lundgren). And wouldn’t you believe it, these two are not only on the plane too, but have brought a couple of feckless henchmen and a pretty insane plan that’ll turn out to include mass murder.

I’d suggest retitling – if only in one’s head – to “Dolph on a Plane”, with Dolph Lundgren as (motherfucking) Dolph (on this motherfucking plane) and Denise Richards as Samuel L. Jackson to get into the right spirit for Alex Merkin’s very silly, pretty cheap, sometimes funny and generally entertaining action movie. For if you go into this one wanting to take it straightforwardly serious, you’ll not come out of it a happy person.

Despite quite a few dead bodies the film’s tone is light but not parodic or exactly comedic. It’s just very much in tune with its own silliness, unwilling to apologize for it, while on the other hand perfectly willing to wallow in it. So there’s a great amount of nonsense about the ways planes, hostage negotiation, parachutes, the FBI, guns, and gravity work, because how could you ever set an action film on a plane otherwise? As someone not going into cheap action movies hoping for realism (or even plain veracity), I’m perfectly fine with it. And once you’re willing to accept Denise Richards as FBI hostage negotiator and budding action heroine you’re all set to actually enjoy this thing.

Richards obviously isn’t exactly the ideal choice for the whole action business, but she’s certainly game for any stupid crap the script needs her to say or do, her stunt double’s game for the action, and while she still hasn’t been kissed by the Great Goddess of Thespians, she does deliver her lines convincing enough, as far as that goes with these particular lines. Which isn’t something I’d say about all action movie leads. Dolph, as is his wont these days, spends most of the film in the same (cockpit) set but Merkin did obviously have him for enough shooting days to actually have him interact with most of the main cast and place him inside the film’s actual plot, which isn’t a given with the big guy’s movies these says. And if you ever wanted to watch Dolph hum the “Ride of the Valkyries” while piloting an aircraft, this is the film for you. He seems to have fun with it, at least.

The rest of the cast is solid, too, while the special effects are cheap in a likeable manner. Merkin’s direction does lack a bit of clarity during some of the action, but he never gets the film bogged down in boring nonsense like characterisation or other filler, keeping things moving and going from one cheap-o nonsense set piece to the next. So Altitude’s a fun little piece of direct-to-video fodder.