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528. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. Went into this one with really low expectations, and that worked because I kind of liked it. In other words, I'll probably never watch it again, but if someone else was watching it, I'd say, yeah, that wasn't too bad. I can't really say that I remember the first one all to well, or if I even watched it, but lucky for me this one is pretty short and spends a good amount of that short runtime recapping the first movie, and doing a montage leading up to the main characters getting 'trapped' in the new escape room? But it's not an escape room. This is a Saw movie for 13- to 16-year-olds who don't have cool parents that let them watch R-rated movies. It even has a previous survivor named Amanda, hmmm. Instead of mastermind Jigsaw running the show, it felt more like the wealthy people behind the events of Hostel. In this the main characters Zoey and Ben, part 1's survivors, are investigating the company behind the escape rooms, and find themselves on a subway after being mugged. After what seems like an accident, they discover that they are trapped in another escape room, oh no! What about the other passengers, well, it just so happens that the handful of people in this subway car, are survivors of other escape rooms as well! One even exclaims this must be a tournament of champions, no joke there... And like the Saw movies, they must work together to figure out the elaborate traps to survive each room. My guess, this was a Saw script at one time, and someone passed, someone else picked it up, changed a few things and boom Escape Room franchise born. Like I said going into it with low expectations of watching a horror movie made for younger teens, helps a lot. For what it was, it was decent. Short enough with a decent pace so boredom doesn't set it. The acting, well it's like any other teen horror movie acting, meh... Filmbufftim on FB.

522. The Clovehitch Killer. It was a decent PG rated, maybe Lifetime serial killer movie of the week. I really liked Dylan McDermott's performance as dad, Don, pulls off the 'I am old and my back hurts' dad bit really well, and well, other things... Like being creepy! This is pretty much telling the tale of the BTK Killer, Dennis Rader, just with a different outcome. Takes place is a close-knit religious town, that used to have a serial killer problem, but 10 years ago the killer went silent. And then one night Don's horny son, Tyler sneaks out in the middle of the night stealing dad's truck to make out with a girl. And while all that is going on, Tyler's date finds a dirty picture, of a girl in bondage type situation, and given their upbringing this stuff is pretty close to the devil's work. Tyler of course knows it must be dear old dads, this leads him to explore dads private shed and finds some more dirty dirty things, including a polaroid picture of someone tied up with one of the Clovehitch Killer's victims name on it!! Is dad a serial killer? Who can I talk to about this? Well, that's super easy, the outsider goth girl, Kassi, who lives with not her mom, not mom worked for the police, who just happened to have all the Clovehitch Killer files in the living room. And off the teenage detectives go to find out if Tyler's dad is a serial killer or not. What do you think? Huh? Spoiler Alert! I personally hated the ending, I could possibly see Tyler wanting things to end the way they do, however, not Kassi. When we find out the things we find out about her, I just don't see that ending happening. Also on a final note, the guy who plays Tyler, Charlie Plummer, is it me or does he look a lot like Hailee Steinfeld of Bumblebee? On a second final note, the girl that plays Kassi, Madisen Baily, looks like a hybrid of Isla Fisher and Anna Paquin. Hmmm... Filmbufftim on FB.