Escape Room

A young man named Ben falls through the ceiling of a room where the walls begin moving inwards. He tries to solve a puzzle to unlock the exit, but is unable to do so as the walls close on him. Three days earlier, a puzzle cube is sent to various people in Chicago: Zoey, a physics student; Jason, a wealthy daytrader; and Ben, who works as a stockboy. When they each solve the puzzle, they are invited to take part in an escape room by the company Minos with a $10,000 prize. Zoey, Jason, and Ben meet each other and the other contestants in the Minos office waiting room: Mike, a truck driver; Amanda, an Iraq War veteran; and Danny, an escape room enthusiast. When Ben tries to leave the waiting room it is revealed to be the first escape room, a giant oven. The group makes it to the next room, which holds a winter cabin, snowy woods, and a frozen lake. Danny falls through ice of the lake and drowns, showing that the rooms are actually dangerous. The third room is an upside-down billiards hall where parts of the floor periodically fall into a deep shaft. Amanda falls to her death after saving an 8 ball necessary to solve the room's puzzle. The next room has a hospital theme and beds that remind each of the players of past experiences where they were sole survivors of various disasters. Mike survived a mine cave-in, Zoey survived a plane crash, Danny survived carbon monoxide poisoning that killed his family, Amanda survived an IED blast, Jason survived a shipwreck in frigid weather, and Ben survived a car accident where his friends died. Zoey realizes that the various escape rooms have been modeled on those past experiences and that she and the other players were deliberately targeted by Minos. Enraged, she stops playing and begins looking for a way out of the game, even as the room begins to fill with toxic gas. The others realize that they need to register a certain heart rate to escape and Jason accidentally shocks Mike to death with a defibrillator while attempting to do so. Jason and Ben manage to open the door to the next room, but Zoey refuses to leave and is left behind. A transdermal drug on a hatch in the next room poisons Ben and Jason and disorients them. When Ben finds a dose of antidote, Jason attacks him and Ben accidentally kills him in the struggle before falling into the room from the beginning of the movie. Ben escapes the parlor via the fireplace and meets the Gamemaster. He explains each game's players follow a particular theme, which the Puzzle Maker uses to craft the rooms. The Gamemaster then runs the game for the players while wealthy viewers watch and bet on the results. Ben is attacked by the Gamemaster, but Zoey intervenes, having used an oxygen mask in the hospital room to survive the gas and escaped the room after Minos employees entered. Together they kill the Gamemaster and escape. Zoey returns to the building with the police, but the building appears abandoned and all evidence of the game has disappeared. Six months later, Zoey meets up with Ben and shows him newspaper articles about the other players' deaths, which have been staged to look like accidents. She also shares that clues from the Minos company logo point to a building in Manhattan. After sharing her plan to fly to New York City to confront Minos directly, Ben agrees to go with her. An airplane is shown to be in distress, with flight attendants working on a puzzle in order to access the cockpit. They solve it, but access the cockpit too late to save the plane from crashing. It is revealed to be a mock plane testing a new Minos escape room designed for Zoey and Ben's flight to New York.