If the small-town escape room you signed up
for turned out to be inescapable and your safe word didn’t work, what would you do? I’m going to break down the mistakes made
by the escapists, what they should have done differently, and how to beat the inventor
in No Escape Room. The theme of this escape room is that this
is the home of a man called 'The Inventor', who spent his life trying to communicate with
the dead through various contraptions, drugs, and human test subjects. After they get locked inside, they soon find
out this isn't a 'theme', and The Inventor needs more human test subjects. Let's find out if we can escape what wasn't
meant to be escapable. Before we get to it, I’m looking for a Nerd
who can help me make grotesque thumbnails that will almost get me blocked on YouTube. If you’re interested, click my link in the
description. Things aren’t going well for Michael. He had made plans for a day of horseback riding
with his teenage daughter, Karen, but the back-country ranch was closed when they arrived. Now instead of forging fond family memories,
they’re broken down on a secluded stretch of highway out in the middle of nowhere. Rather than help out under the hood, Karen
pulls the typical “I’m too cool for my parents” routine and stays glued to her
phone while blasting music. She’s so committed to shutting out her father
she nearly walks in front of a passing tow truck without even noticing. The car trouble proves to be more than Michael
can handle, and the two wind up at a nearby diner while a repair shop works to get them
back on the road. Determined to salvage the one weekend he gets
with his daughter for the month, Michael flips through a local newspaper in search of an
activity they can both enjoy. Movies, mini golf, and bowling all fail to
meet Karen’s strict standards of amusement, but then Michael lands on an ad for an escape
room. Despite his daughter’s concerns that it
might be run out of some weirdo’s garage, Michael commits to the activity on the spot,
summoning a nearby waitress to ask for directions. The waitress’ cheerful disposition gives
way to an expression of concern. She warns them not to go, claiming a lot of
bad things have happened there over the years and visitors are often never heard from again. She then busts out laughing and apologizes
for screwing with them. The waitress explains they’re in for a hell
of a time. “Just tell them Betsy sent you,” she says,
and then casually walks away without actually providing any directions. Karen visits the bathroom before they head
out. As she stands alone at the sink cleaning a
stain off her sweatshirt, the single bulb lighting the dingy lavatory begins to flicker,
sending a chill up her spine. She hears a coin drop in one of the stalls
and turns to investigate, but before she can discover the source of the noise, Betsy comes
barging out of an adjacent stall and nearly door checks her. The waitress apologizes for the scare and
then barely wets her hands before going back to handle people’s food. Still a little weirded out by the strange
sounds, Karen returns to the sink and collects her belongings. Obviously, training your kid to come around
the side of the car farthest from the road should have started before her age. Karen’s lucky both her dad and the tow truck
driver were paying attention, otherwise this movie would be a hell of a lot shorter. Michael’s not all that on the ball either. Why would you just drive on out to a remote
horse ranch without at least calling ahead to make sure they’ll be open when you get
there? Rural areas are often home to far more activities
than people give them credit for, but escape rooms typically aren’t among them. Both Michael and Karen have a smart phone
with service. They can go on groupon or yelp to find something
to do at a reputable place. Had they used their phones like normal people,
they likely would have landed on a safe, well-reviewed activity instead of the hell-hole they are
about to wander into. Now that our plans have changed, we should
immediately notify our friends and/or loved ones to let them know exactly what we’ll
be doing and where, ya know, basic common sense stuff. I’m not sure why it would be necessary to
check out a bathroom stall over the sound of falling pocket change. She should leave immediately if she feels
unsafe, but if she wants to investigate, she should bend down to glance under the stall
doors to see if anyone’s there instead of creeping closer to the door, putting her in
range of being grabbed or hit by the door when it opens. As we find out later, there is a person creeping
in the bathroom, and it’s Karen. What this means, and what would happen if
she opened the door, I’m not too sure. Confused? Strap in. A
cab drops Michael and Karen off at a large house out in the country. The place seems deserted, but Michael is certain
this is where the escape rooms were advertised. A few hard knocks yield no response at first,
but then the door swings open, seemingly by itself. Upon walking inside, there's no sign of anyone
around, until a woman suddenly materializes behind Karen’s back and grabs her by the
arms, demanding to know how they got inside and what they’re after. Michael rushes to intervene, but the encounter
is quickly revealed to be just a part of the act. The strange woman, Josie, says that the others
are waiting and then leads them down the hall. Deeper inside the home, Michael and Karen
meet up with three other participants: birthday girl Melanie, her phone-addicted boyfriend,
Tyler, and fifth wheel Chad–I mean Andrew. Melanie claims to be an avid escapist, but
it seems like her boyfriend only came along to get out of buying her a present. Andrew then dryly jokes about being a secret
plant working for the owners, likely to deflect from the fact he’s the kind of weirdo that
goes to an escape room by himself. Josie walks in carrying a tray of bubbling
teacups. She explains that few visitors have dared
to come since “the disappearances” before distributing the cups amongst her guests. Karen goes to take a sip of the concoction
but Michael stops her, pointing out she doesn’t even know what it is. Melanie, on the other hand, eagerly slurps
the stuff down, loosely identifying it as chai tea. Josie then passes out a round of waivers for
everyone to sign without actually reading and begins collecting their cell phones. With all participants ready to play, she closes
the heavy metal storm shutters on all the windows and wheels out an antique film projector. As the silver screen flickers with disturbing
images of disfigured corpses and grotesque medical experiments, Josie lays out the backstory
to the escape room scenario. She explains that the local population was
once plagued by bizarre and nightmarish visions of unknown origin. Doctors feared it to be an epidemic of mental
illness, while the church placed the blame on satanic intervention. Ultimately, the source of this mysterious
affliction was determined to be this very house. According to Josie’s story, the property
belonged to a reclusive inventor who moved out to the country to conduct experiments
society wouldn’t approve of. The town sent five people to investigate the
inventor’s home and put a stop to his activities, but none of them were ever seen again. Now it’s up to the five participants to
find the missing townsfolk and help them escape. Each of the escape rooms will contain a key
to let them progress through the house. They have an hour to complete their task,
but can leave the game at any time by saying the word, “awake.” The film strip reaches its end, leaving the
room pitch black. Melanie turns on a nearby lamp to reveal that
Josie has disappeared. There are red flags popping off everywhere
that should make us reconsider getting locked up in this person’s basement. Firstly, the metal bars installed over the
interior of the back windows in the main entryway. This is at minimum a fire hazard, and wholly
unnecessary for an escape room designed to rely on their wits. Secondly, The fact that Karen was grabbed
by the receptionist. Laws about touching someone during an activity
are pretty complicated, however, it’s generally frowned upon, especially before signing a
waiver. Thirdly, lack of payment requested upfront. There’s no free lunch, or Chai tea, and
you’re going to be paying somehow. It’s usually best to not leave the terms
of compensation vague and mysterious. I’m not saying the escape room operators
will try to ransom you, but they might. And that’s the best, worst case. When it comes to the complimentary drinks,
the steam could be explained away as dry ice added for thematic effect, but yeah, I’m
not going to be drinking that potentially laced tea, and I’m sure as hell not giving
up my phone. Risk of theft aside, something serious could
happen that warrants a call to 911. I would just tell the hostess I left my phone
in the car, or that I’m a luddite and cell phones are the devil. Unless she’s willing to strip search me,
that should be all it takes to keep it. At minimum, a last text should be sent to
your loved ones letting them know where you are, what you’re doing, and when you’ll
check back in with them. You’ll probably be dead by the time they
notice you’re missing, but in the event your captor likes to toy with you for a while,
they might get a rescue team to you intime. Escape room contracts are usually longer than
a single page, and important legal and health information would be in plain text to protect
the company from liability. Cutesy “period accurate” contracts are
fine so long as you can read them, but if it’s in an illegible scrawl, no one should
be signing this to make sure they don’t wind up getting sewn into a human cent-iPad. Even though these escape rooms typically rely
on wit and puzzle-solving, it’s always a good idea to be paying attention to how they
lock you in, where they go, and how you could brute force your way out if the puzzle box
stops working and nobody responds to your safe word. The shutters across the windows are operated
by some sort of mechanical pulley system. This suggests that, at least in this room,
the group might be able to use leverage to lift the plates off the un-barred windows
or “wind” the gears in reverse to lift the plates. Still a little shaken up from story time,
the group makes their way to the first of the escape rooms. It’s a dusty, old study, lit up just barely
enough to see. The door swings shut behind them with a mechanical
clanking of turning gears; they’re locked in. A buzzer then sounds on a nearby clock showing
60 minutes remaining. With the game underway, the group begins searching
the ancient clutter for anything that looks out of place. Almost immediately, Karen comes across some
bottles labeled “ayyyy,” which Andrew explains is a powerful hallucinogen used by
South American shamans to communicate with the beyond. A bit more searching turns up an old vinyl
album by Ma Kettle & the Jug Boys. At first it seems like a red herring, but
Karen and Andrew spin it up on a nearby gramophone anyway. The music is…terrible, but Melanie quickly
connects the words of the song to the various symbols adorning a series of tribal masks
hanging on the wall. After rearranging the masks according to the
lyrics, a painting swings open to reveal a hidden safe. While everyone else sets out to find the combination,
Tyler takes one of the masks off the wall and gazes through the eye slots. He looks down at his hand to find worms crawling
around under his skin. Tyler then aims the mask at Melanie, seeing
a shadowy figure walking right beside her. Terrified, he calls her name and scares the
crap out of her. Everyone looks at him like he’s crazy, but
he insists he saw something in the room with them. After talking down the frightened Tyler, Andrew
flips on a nearby table lamp to examine a piece of paper. Michael notices the light from the lamp’s
UV bulb reveals numbers painted on the masks from earlier. They enter the combination into the safe and
boom, that’s key number one. Right off the bat there’s another huge red
flag. No emergency exits. All real escape rooms have one, and there’s
no way the local fire marshall would allow a business to actually lock its customers
inside without a way for them to readily let themselves out. The fact that there is no fire exit means
we’re dealing with a pretty disreputable operation at best, and honestly, that’d
be all the excuse I would need to give the safe word. Tyler’s experience with the mask would be
pretty frightening, sure, but it could possibly be explained as some kind of holographic film
covering the eye slots. That’d be pretty easy to verify by poking
out the film or having one of the others take a look through the mask to see if they see
the worms too. If they don’t, it’s pretty reasonable
to assume that tea was spiked with a hallucinogenic and everyone needs to be shouting ‘awake’. It’s not too far-fetched considering this
establishment hasn’t even remotely been following the law, and one of the escapee’s
mentioned seeing a reference to hallucinogens which might have been inappropriately included
for its relevance to the games theme. As we find out soon, the safe word doesn’t
abort the game. The game operators are clearly not playing
fairly and not taking their guests' safety seriously means searching for keys as a way
to escape is probably a dead end, literally. Their only real option is to circumvent the
game somehow, like brute forcing their way out by popping door hinges and knocking down
the starting room door with anything they can find. The next room has a bunch of old clocks and
much better lighting. Another buzz calls everyone’s attention
to the game timer showing they still have fifty minutes to finish the remaining rooms. In the center of the room is a strange device
the inventor supposedly used to try and communicate with the dead. Melanie picks up the handset and attempts
to make contact with whomever might be on the other side. At first she thinks it’s just a gag that
replay’s whatever she says back to her, but then she hears someone talking freely
in her own voice, and they want to speak with Tyler. Tyler begrudgingly takes the phone from Melanie. Her voice is still coming through the line,
apologizing profusely and begging him to leave the house. Suddenly, Karen sees what looks like blood
on Tyler’s ear. He turns the phone to find a writhing mass
of bloody worms clinging to the earpiece before tossing it away in equal parts horror and
disgust. The handset breaks apart, revealing more fake
blood inside, but there’s no sign of any worms like Tyler claims. Once again, he’s certain he saw something
no one else did, but this time he won’t back down. Having had his fill of freaky shit, Tyler
decides to call it quits and screams “awake” until the previous door finally opens to let
him out. Melanie tries to go after him but the door
slams shut right in front of her. Either unconvinced or unconcerned by the look
of sheer terror on her boyfriend’s face, Melanie decides to go on without him. The others aren’t so sure, as Tyler’s
panic seemed sincere. Andrew suggests that maybe the hosts spiked
the tea they were given before the introduction, citing that they have no idea what they agreed
to in the waiver they blindly signed. Melanie won’t have it. She’s determined to get another escape room
under her belt and convinces the remaining participants to press onward despite the strange
occurrences. This could all be explained as just a trick
by a real escape room operator, such as using voice modulators to sound like Melanie or
hidden mechanisms on the phone could open to release fake blood and/or worms, and if
this is too much for Tyler, he shouldn't be playing the game and has every right to want
to leave. Honestly, Tyler made the entirely reasonable
choice to bail with the safe word after his hallucinogenic experience. This is exactly why you do not drink unknown
substances shady businesses are handing out, or sign agreements without reading and fully
understanding what you are agreeing to. While Tyler’s freakout seemed sincere, and
their suspicion of Josie spiking the tea is a giant red flag, the federal-level drug trafficking
type of red flag, nobody has a reason to suspect anything truly sinister yet, and everyone’s
too wrapped up in the game’s thick atmosphere to realize they are waltzing deeper into the
trap. Michael discovers that the keys on a nearby
typewriter have been rearranged. Melanie determines it must be a cypher, so
now they just need to figure out what to type in. Karen then notices one of the clocks is stopped
at 10:12. Seeing the radio in the room, Melanie suggests
that it must correspond to a specific station. They tune the dial to 101.2 and a man’s
voice begins reading off a random series of letters. When punched into the cypher, the input returns
“five lost from midnight.” It seems like a stumper at first, but Karen
figures it out. She turns the hands on the broken clock to
read 11:55 and a key drops from below the face. Instead of unlocking the next escape room,
however, the second key opens the door to a nearby closet. Karen starts digging through the piled up
clothing on the floor and finds something wet. Suddenly, a hand reaches out from under a
blanket and grabs her by the arm. The hand belongs to Josie, who seems to be
suffering from a stab wound to her abdomen. As she bleeds out on the floor, she weakly
warns everyone “the inventor is here,” and that if they don’t escape the house
before their hour is up, they’ll be trapped inside forever. She tells them they need to find the master
key, and then the closet door slams shut on its own, locking her inside. While Andrew, Michael, and Karen are all shocked
by what they just saw, Melanie shrugs it off as just another part of the game. Despite her protests, Michael decides he’s
had enough and shouts the safe word at one of the other doors. There’s no response. Michael asks Melanie if it’s common for
escape rooms to just ignore the safe word and leave their participants trapped. Andrew brings up the fact that Tyler was allowed
to leave, but Michael questions whether he actually made it out at all. Karen sides with Melanie and suggests that
perhaps the doors aren’t opening because Josie had to return to the front desk. She adds that it’s quite a coincidence the
closet door slammed shut before they could verify her condition. Either Josie’s death was staged, or she’s
really committed to staying in character. If it were real, why didn’t she say something
along the lines of “I just got stabbed! Call a friggin ambulance!?” I suppose she could have been delirious from
blood loss, but still, her exclaiming “The Inventor is Here” is exactly what one would
expect her to say if it were just a part of the game. I would have smelled the spot on my hand where
Josie grabbed me. Blood has a distinctive metallic odor that
fake blood typically doesn’t emulate. This would be a simple way to tell if she
was really injured. If it's real however, not only could someone
end up dying, but whoever attacked them may be after one of us next. I would get someone to help me drag Josie
out of the closet where we had more room to take care of her, and so the doors don’t
remotely shut on us like they have been. I’d apply pressure to her wound with clothes,
while asking what happened to her, how we can avoid a similar fate, what master key,
where is it, which room, where she put their phones, how to raise the window plates, and
if there’s a false back to the closet. With how into character she seems to be, she
could try faking her death, in which case you’d wanna check her pulse to ensure this
isn’t an insanely elaborate, borderline psychotic prank. Like Karen said, it’s awfully convenient
the door would shut before they could investigate further. That said, there are a lot of automated contraptions
in the house, so it really could be a coincidence it happened to shut at that time. Real blood or not, the safe word not working
is a clear sign something is wrong. Given the level of automation we’ve seen
in the house so far, it’s not like Josie would have to be physically touching the door
to open it. Even if it’s just some kind of malfunction,
that doesn’t change the fact that we’re trapped inside. At this point, I’d start breaking apart
the lamps and furniture to fashion tools I could use to bust through the doors and/or
drywall. We’d find out pretty quickly whether it
was all a hoax if Josie came running out to stop us from destroying her meal ticket. Plus, if there really is a murderer on the
loose, it couldn’t hurt to have something we could use to defend ourselves. Will it ultimately matter, it’s hard to
tell. The group decides to continue playing the
game. Meanwhile, the timer on the wall buzzes again,
showing they only have 40 minutes to reach the end. With the last key only working on the closet
door, they decide they need to think of another way to exit the current room. Andrew spots a small window above one of the
locked doors, but he doesn’t think it’s large enough for anyone to make it through. Karen confidently claims that she can fit
and volunteers as tribute. I agree with the decision to ignore keys and
find another way out. Maybe it’s the forced perspective, but it
looks to me like just about any of them could have squeezed through that window. At very least Melanie could have gone too. She’s barely any bigger than Karen and who
knows if there are puzzles on the other side that require more than one person to complete. Besides, if we’re still not 100% sure someone
wasn’t just stabbed to death and left in a closet to die, we probably shouldn’t be
sending anyone anywhere alone, least of all a defenseless, gullible teenage girl. I would have dragged some of the furniture
over to the door and tried sending everyone through the window. If it really were too small for anyone else
to climb through, I’d probably hold off on that option until we’ve literally tried
everything else. Or at least put a desk in front of it to stand
on and help her back out if someone else was there. Once on the other side, Karen is still unable
to open the door leading back to the others. She tries peeking through a privacy window
on one of the other doors when suddenly a hand comes slamming into the glass, sending
her screaming back down the hall. Just then, a shadowy figure carrying a lantern
walks down an intersecting hallway and beckons Karen to follow her. Assuming it’s just the hostess, Karen tells
the rest of the group Josie’s okay before following her into the darkness. Seeing no other way out of the room, Michael
and Andrew pick up a grandfather clock and use it like a battering ram to try and break
down the door. Meanwhile, Josie’s ghostly, otherworldly
whispering leads Karen down to a pitch-black basement. As soon as she walks in, the door slams shut
behind her, setting off a chain reaction of turning gears that unlocks the door for the
rest of the group. Even if you thought that was really Josie
walking down the hall, her behavior is not normal, especially the weird, creepy whispering
she’s clearly using to bait Karen away from her group and into a vulnerable isolated area. The proverbial evil jelly bean trail strikes
again. Now would be a great time to climb back into
the room where there’s safety in numbers. There’s no way in hell I’d be following
her tauntings with a murderer on the loose, let alone going into that basement. Game or not, it looks like something out of
Saw. Also, given how we’ve seen doors slam shut
on their own, it’s painfully stupid to NOT be jamming up the path of every door we come
across. Even a balled-up sweatshirt should be enough
to hold it ajar. The moment they use the grandfather clock
to attempt to bash down the door and Josie doesn’t come barreling in freaking out about
property damage, they should acknowledge that she didn’t fake her death and that they’re
in real danger and need to GTFO. There doesn’t appear to be a traditional
locking mechanism on this door, suggesting a top and bottom-facing deadbolt, or worse,
the door could be steel lined like a vault. Which again, means their only chance is to
ensure that open doors remain open with jams. Tearing through the walls instead would likely
reveal all the cogs and gears lining every room of the house, which in turn would reveal
that the house could be reacting to their every move. In short, save for a crack in the castle wall
or playing the game, they’re screwed. While Michael, Melanie, and Andrew move to
catch up, Karen fearfully explores her surroundings in search of Josie. She appears to be trapped in some kind of
DIY mortuary. After making her way over to the sink, Karen
spots a small key lying near the drain, but realizes it’s actually one of Josie’s
earrings. As she turns away, she notices the four adjacent
drawer coolers seem to have opened by themselves. The lights flicker and suddenly only one of
the coolers is open, and it’s no longer empty. Slowly, Karen approaches the shrouded figure
protruding from the drawer. She pulls back the cover, revealing a gnarled
human body draped across the slab. Terrified by what she sees, Karen turns away
from the rotting corpse until she hears the drawer shut once again. Her relief is short lived, however, as a low
guttural growl begins emanating from the adjoining room. Careful not to make any noise, Karen quietly
creeps over to the morgue entrance and shuts the door. Almost immediately, the growling intensifies
and something heavy slams into the flimsy wooden planks. Karen climbs into one of the empty coolers,
shutting the drawer just as the door swings open. I don’t care if it’s an earring, a toe
ring, or an onion ring, if it looks like a key, I’m putting it in my pocket for later. It’s at least worth trying on a lock if
we get stuck. Again, everything we’ve seen indicates that
continuing to play the game is the worst option. In the back of the morgue there is a breakable
window with bars spaced far enough apart that Karen might be able to slip through. Besides that, hiding in the cadaver cabinet
was probably the best move given the circumstances. I’m guessing whatever was making that growling
noise wasn’t too friendly, so I would have brought something in there with me I could
use as a weapon if it came down to it. Looks like there’s plenty of sharp objects
in there we could grab like scalpels or surgical scissors. The cadaver cabinet seemed to be hollow. Karen could climb down to the lower level
and hide underneath the top tray, or sneak over to the opposite side the creature was
loudly moving towards. Back upstairs, the rest of the group notices
a ray of light spilling through the keyhole on one of the doors. After Michael waves his hand in front of the
opening, the door unlocks and creaks open slightly. Inside they find a twisting maze of hanging
sheets and a running film projector. The game timer buzzes once again showing they
only have 35 minutes left to play. Further investigation reveals a combination
lock on a desk drawer and a couple reels of film for the projector. Melanie slaps in one of the reels, but it’s
more of the same weird crap from Josie’s introduction video. The group then turns their attention to a
ceiling fan spinning overhead. Andrew, displaying some oddly niche knowledge,
suggests using the flickering light of the projector to make the fan blades appear motionless. The machine is bolted down, but fortunately
there’s a small mirror conveniently stashed nearby. Bouncing the light off the mirror reveals
a combination painted on the fan. Michael dials it into the lock and opens the
drawer to find key number three. He and Andrew waste no time leaving the room,
but Melanie stays behind, mesmerized by what she sees projected on the screen. It looks like her, walking in a loop through
the maze of dangling white sheets. Suddenly, the door to the room shuts and she’s
cut off from the rest of the trio. Right now the priority is looking for Karen,
and Tyler.. Though he’s probably already dead. We should have just called her name when the
door opened instead of barging into another room we could potentially become locked inside
of. If we didn’t have a reason to believe she
was in there, we should have moved on and come back later once we’d checked everywhere
else. When the group walked up the stairs there
was a set of doors that had exposed hinges and what appeared to be glass with thin pieces
of wood separating them. Karen might have gotten locked behind that
door for all they know. They could at least try breaking in to check. More evidence that the house is reacting to
their moves is the door opening based on motion activation, that or a puppeteer is watching
them on camera. Meaning this game is far more involved to
only take 60 minutes. Andrew’s mirror trick is cute, but they
could also just shove a pole in the fan blades. Or, skip this whole thing and climb up the
ladder that has natural light pouring out of it. After they collected the key, Melanie should
have known better than to let herself become separated from the rest of the group. Likewise, Michael and Andrew should have stuck
around for a second to make sure she was following them. The house is clearly set up to cut people
off from one another, and we need to keep everyone together to have the best shot at
solving all the puzzles or defending ourselves from the murderer, before time runs out. They can’t be too surprised when the door
shuts and locks itself. Why would they expect anything different at
this point? Once again, this is a clear example of why
they should be using the plentiful junk strewn about the house to jam up every door they
come across. Melanie’s confusion only worsens as she
tries to navigate the linen maze, with every turn leading her right back to the projector. At first she’s impressed with the intricacy
of the illusion, but her excitement quickly turns to panic as she becomes desperate to
find her way back to Michael and Andrew, who are too busy hurling accusations at each other
to try and find a way back to her. Just as she begins to call out for help, Melanie
rounds another corner to find Tyler stiff as a board, dangling from the ceiling with
a noose around his neck. Her screams of terror are quickly cut short
by the sound of a phone ringing back at the projector. Though hesitant at first, Melanie answers,
only to realize she’s talking to herself from earlier in the game. Just like before, she asks to speak with Tyler,
warning him to leave the house as soon as possible. Huh, I wonder how that will turn out. The line goes dead, and she finds herself
surrounded by dark shadows with clawed hands cast against the hanging sheets. As more and more of the shadowy figures begin
to manifest, Melanie backs into a ladder leading up to an open hatch. Halfway to salvation, one of the rungs breaks
under her foot, sending her tumbling down to the desk below where an upright scalpel
is waiting to puncture the back of her skull. Once I discovered that walking in one direction
would mysteriously teleport me to the other side of the room, besides having an out of
body crisis at the thought of teleporting and how totally out of depth I am, try walking
around the doorframe. The teleportation seems to be localized to
a specific door frame, so other avenues may circumvent the portal. I would have also torn down the sheets creating
the maze to make the room easier to navigate and prevent someone from sneaking up on me. I’m a little surprised she didn’t check
to see if Tyler was still alive. Granted, he probably wasn’t, but hanging
can take a while to kill someone depending on the circumstances. After discovering Tyler’s death was likely
the result of him breaking off from the rest of the group, why would you still tell him
to leave the house like that? You literally know exactly what will happen
if he does. Most people would look back on a tragedy like
this and wish they would have done something different, but instead Melanie sets Tyler
up to die in the exact same way. I would have told him to stay with the group,
or better yet, just said nothing once I realized I was on the other end of the phone call from
earlier. Once Melanie became surrounded by the shadowy
figures, the ladder was probably her only viable means of escape. There was no way to anticipate the rung would
break like that, but she could have at least tried to hold onto the top rungs so she didn’t
fall uncontrolled. Down in the basement, things have not been
going so great for Karen. Not only was she crammed inside a corpse cooler,
but the body on the slab beside her seems to have had a little life left in it. Still trapped by whatever was prowling around
the mortuary, she quietly cries “awake” in hopes of ending her living nightmare. Just then, the door of the cooler swings open,
but fortunately it’s only Andrew. He helps Karen down from her hiding spot just
as the only exit, yet again, shuts and locks them in the morgue. Karen becomes suspicious of the fact Andrew
showed up by himself and somehow knew exactly where she was. He claims that he and Michael split up to
find her, and that he heard her screams. Sensing her concern, he reassures her that
this is all just a twisted game that’s gotten out of hand. Karen reluctantly agrees to team up again,
and remembers that Josie told them there were five townspeople they needed to help escape,
which she connects to there being five of them at the start of the game. She suggests they must have unwittingly signed
up for some kind of bizarre experiment, but Andrew doesn’t care. Game or not, they need to find a way to escape
the basement. For the love of god, jam, the doors. I definitely wouldn’t trust Andrew. Despite how stupid our team has been so far,
it’s unlikely Michael agreed to intentionally split up. Karen also wasn’t screaming when he arrived,
which begs the question, how did he find her. Thinking back, Karen did scream in the morgue,
when she first heard a noise at the entrance.. Andrew may have been the one making noises
from earlier with some sort of voice modulator. I wouldn’t make this fact known though,
as it could provoke him if he was a plant, or if he wasn’t, it’d only make teamwork
more difficult. As Marine Corps General James "Mad Dog" Mattis
said, ‘Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.’ I’d slip a scalpel into my back pocket and
keep an eye on him. The two go to work searching for any clues
that might lead them to the next key. Karen begins thumbing through a dusty old
folder, finding a diagram of a woman’s body with arrow’s pointing to her abdomen and
the words “foreign object removed from the stomach”. At the same time, Andrew stumbles upon a heavy
metal grate sealed by a padlock. He then spots the small key in the bottom
of the sink, but Karen tells him it’s just an earring. A slip of paper sticking out from behind one
of the anatomical drawings on the wall turns out to be a map of the basement. Karen finds another exit marked in the same
spot as a filthy, backed-up toilet. Realizing it’s par for the course at this
point, Andrew rolls up his sleeve and goes in wrist deep. After feeling around for a moment, he thinks
he’s found something, pulling out the mushy remains of a severed human hand. Somehow managing not to vomit, Karen decides
to give it a go herself. She throws the hand out of the way, and soon
enough, she’s found the fourth key. The two triumphantly unlock the grate and
Karen leads the way inside. The walls begin to narrow and claustrophobia
brings her to a dead stop. Andrew does his best to take her mind off
her surroundings, suggesting she think about something fun like horseback riding. He gets halfway through the set up of a “two
guys walk into a bar” joke when something grabs him from behind, pulling him back into
the darkness to not be seen again. What’s the harm in at least trying the key
from the bottom of the sink? Best-case scenario, you avoid having to dig
through all that nasty shit water. Worst case, you’re back where you started. Given that it’s a mortuary, I would have
maybe looked around for some rubber gloves before rooting around in the filthy toilet. Once they got the lock off the grate, I’d
go first and ensure that we locked the gate behind us so nothing could follow. Andrew’s still the primary threat. By going first with a sharp object in hand,
if he attacked us we could kick him in the head or cut his neck. By being in the back, he could stomp our heads
in or block the exit. One thing’s for sure, I would have wasted
no time crawling through that duct. While Andrew and Karen were busy digging around
in raw sewage, Michael was wandering aimlessly through the house in pursuit of his missing
daughter. His search takes him to a set of muddy footprints
leading to a nearby painting. For some reason, Michael becomes transfixed
by the image, completely losing himself in the landscape. The walls of the house collapse around him,
and he finds himself standing at the edge of the water. A pale woman rises from the water and starts
walking towards him, a rusted chain paying out in pace with her steps. When they meet face to face, she puts her
arms around his shoulders. As she kisses away at his neck, Michael notices
a large rotating sprocket has emerged from the water behind her. In an instant the woman is gone, replaced
by chains wrapping around his entire body. The bindings then begin to tighten around
his neck, squeezing the life out of him and forcing him onto the ground. Michael keels over backward, somehow transported
back to the house. He catches his breath and rises to his feet
before noticing something different about the painting. Where once there was nothing in the middle
of the water now stands Josie holding a lantern. Michael looks down and discovers his shoes
are caked in fresh mud. He staggers away from the mysterious painting
before it can send him on another blind date. I don’t think Michael couldn’t have predicted
getting sucked into a painting like Super Mario 64. It’s hard to say whether he had any control
over his behavior at this time, but we do see him looking around and moving towards
the water. If I could help it, I wouldn’t have let
the strange woman anywhere near me. My first thought would be her trying to drag
us both back into the creek, especially with the chains leading towards her. Ultimately, it was just some kind of vivid
hallucination. Although that doesn’t explain the mud all
over Michael’s shoes after the fact. One thing’s for sure, I’d stay the hell
away from any other pieces of artwork I came across in the house, and probably just in
general going forward. At this point, Michael’s stumbling around
like Jack from The Shining. He frantically beats on every door he can
find until one finally gives way. Just then, he hears Karen screaming at the
sight of Andrew being dragged off into oblivion. Michael follows the screaming back to the
white linen maze where he finds Tyler hanging around. At the same time, Karen kicks her way out
of a nearby grate, screaming in horror as she stumbles upon Melanie’s body. Finally reunited, Michael and Karen realize
the only way out of this nightmare is to complete the remaining escape rooms as originally intended. Overhead, the buzzing game clock glitches
back and forth between 9 and 36 minutes remaining. They find the desk under the projector has
locked itself back up with the same combination job as before. Rather than waste time screwing around with
the flickering projector, Michael jams a metal pipe in the ceiling fan to bring it to a stop. He retrieves the key from the drawer once
again and the two of them make their way through a bookcase back to the very first room. The game clock is now flipping between 5 and
45 minutes remaining. Suddenly, Tyler busts in through another door
screaming “awake” just like before. Karen yells at him to stop, and for a moment
he does, but it seems he’s unable to actually see the two of them standing just ten feet
away. Confused, Tyler looks around the room for
the source of her commands, but before she can tell him anything that might prevent his
fate, a shadow figure emerges from a nearby door and drags him off into the darkness. Michael is dumbfounded by the sight of Tyler
still alive after seeing him dead only minutes ago. Karen then comes to the conclusion that Josie,
the house, and everything inside it are caught in some kind of time loop, or “echo” as
she puts it. They decide they’ll have to go back to where
they found Josie before in order to retrieve the master key and escape. I don’t think they could have done anything
to keep Tyler from getting got by the shadow thing. He couldn’t see them, so anything else they
might have said to him would have probably just terrified and confused him even more. Good on Karen for putting two and two together. As far out as it is, it’s hard to think
of another explanation that doesn’t involve collective hallucination or being trapped
in some kind of nightmare. After blowing past the first puzzle, Michael
and Karen make their way to the second room with all the clocks. Remembering the process from earlier, they
turn the hands on the grandfather clock to 11:55, but for some reason it won’t give
up the key to the closet. Karen struggles to think of what could have
changed, but Michael realizes it’s they who have changed, there being only two of
them now instead of the original five. They dial the clock to 11:58, and the second
key drops down just like before. The two return to the closet to find Josie
bleeding out all over again. She repeats the same line about finding the
master key, but it’s nowhere to be found. Karen remembers the autopsy drawings she found
in the basement and suggests the key might be lodged in Josie’s stomach. Michael reaches into the wound on Josie’s
abdomen and digs out the master key. The two make it back to the center of the
room as all hell breaks loose around them. Just as the mysterious shadow man enters the
room, Karen spots a prominently featured door that looks like an exit. The master key does its job, and the door
swings open to reveal… the truckstop bathroom? I guess it’s safe to say Josie wasn’t
faking. Either that or she was so committed to the
role she’d rather be violently disemboweled than break character. They’re pretty lucky to have guessed the
right door out of all the others in the room. Michael was just a few seconds away from winding
up worm food at the hands of whatever was sneaking up behind him. Michael and Karen are perplexed by the drastic
change in scenery, with Karen remarking that she’s been here before. Suddenly, they hear the sound of someone approaching,
prompting them to duck inside a nearby stall. It’s Karen, or rather a version of her that
hadn’t yet acquired a deep burning hatred for escape rooms. While past Karen checks herself out in the
mirror, present Karen backs into the nearby wall, accidentally dropping the same coin
she heard in the very beginning. [a]Fortunately, Betsy’s still around to
prevent them from creating a time paradox.[b] Having avoided a quantum catastrophe, Michael
and Karen carefully walk out of the restroom back into the diner. Everything appears to be exactly as they left
it, right down to the partially eaten plates of food where they were sitting. After exiting to the parking lot, Karen notices
their car is still waiting for them. The mechanic left a note saying there won’t
be any charges and the keys are inside. Michael and Karen eagerly jump into the vehicle
and start searching for the keys, but before they can ride off into the sunset, Karen calls
her dad’s attention to the glove box. Looks like the game’s not over. The movie ends. It’s hard to say what would have happened
if past Karen would have opened the stall door. Afterall, if past Tyler couldn’t see them,
why would it be any different for her? After leaving the bathroom, I would have tried
talking to someone in the diner to make sure they could see us. If we were still invisible to other people,
it would be a clear indication that we were still under the influence of the inventor’s
house. Michael should be especially sensitive to
this possibility after what he went through with the woman in the painting. We know from his experience that it’s possible
for the house to transport us somewhere outside it’s walls, be it a hallucination or otherwise. The situation surrounding their car is weird. The fact they took a cab to the escape house
earlier means it was probably still being worked on when they left, so it must just
be the inventor setting them up for more torment with the newly added locks. With the way Betsy was acting at the diner,
and with the mechanic being responsible for the car, it could be the whole town is aware
of and possibly supporting the supernatural happenings for one reason or another. Best to stay far away from that town if possible. Once out of town, I’d be reporting the murders
and finding any possible way to get the escape room location shut down or demolished to prevent
others from entering and having the same experience I had, and to prevent further deaths like
the others may have experienced. In the end, it’s hard to say what, if anything,
they could have done differently to change their inevitable fate, besides simply not
going to the escape rooms in the first place. Even if they could have saved the lives of
the other players, they’d all still be prisoners of the inventor’s house, which might actually
be worse than being dead. What bothers me is that I still can’t figure
out exactly when they reached the point of no return. Could they have still left the house after
starting the first room, or were they doomed the moment they walked into the diner? Let me know what you think in the comments. Ultimately, I think the inventor’s house
from No Escape Room was UNBEATEN. Thanks for watching, and remember, just tell
them Betsy sent you. [a]I can't seem to figure out where she got
this coin. It doesn't seem to be shown in the movie. Could it be a deleted scene or something? [b](0:17) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me-WHitlw8A
