the elevator pitch:
Too much on the nose for this one!
Read/Skip:
READ: I can't decide if Escape Room is timely or old fashioned. On the one hand, it is a Wallstreet/Gordon Gekko type of story. Sara Hall comes from a modest, hard-working family. By impressing the top dog at a law firm, she is granted access to a world of wealth, privileged, cut-throat competition, and eventually the unavoidable corruption.
On the other side, if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren would get a Netflix deal, this could be their first fiction project. And maybe time is a flat circle. Eighties gaudy excess is still resonant, look who sits in the White House.
Escape Room is a high concept thriller. Four people are trapped in an elevator, they think it is a corporate team-building exercise, but it's clearly not a game. It starts strong, cinematic, but the story gets thinner towards the end. Escape Room is a read-before-falling-asleep thriller. Compelling enough to keep you alert, but it will not force you to stay up. Bonus: even if you are groggy, you can easily follow along. And notwithstanding alluding to the 1 percent, it will not stress you out. Escape Room is pure escapist revenge fantasy.
The story:
Sara Hall Is getting desperate. Her degree doesn't open any doors; she is left waitressing at a shabby restaurant. After a disastrous interview, and an accidental run-in with the top dog at the same Wallstreet firm she's offered the keys to the kingdom. But only if she gives up everything: her time, her family, her best friend, and eventually her life.
After her death, someone will have to pay.
