Escaping The Room or The Mind?: Escape Rooms In Theory And Practice

As much as kids are addicted to their puzzle pieces and the outcome of their creation after hours of devotion and hard work, adults might have different ideas concerning that. The negativity of this thought is based on real life experiences and the way they have dealt with the hardships that were brought to them with no further notice.

Childhood is all about colorful rainbows and unicorns, everything is happy and everyone is jolly. But adulthood is not the same, adulthood is the beginning of a journey of survival. An experience of a lifetime that you only have one shot in, and through. In other words, you either win or lose. And that heavily impacts our own vision of reality and how we intend to escape.  But not every escape, is an actual escape. Sometimes it’s just another maze that we need to run away from and survive through. A maze with no ending or any further insight to it. Something that intends to be the end of your existence.

And that’s precisely the theory behind escape room lores and storylines. 

Everybody  has a different meaning of living and how they shall do it, that’s the only difference that divides humanity. But the fun truth is, that we all have one thing we want to escape from. Or rather a place we want to escape to. And in this world, escapism is ventured through multiple forms, making the entertainment industry the number one escape route for all.

Movies and TV Shows that are based on escapism where characters are stuck unless they solve a mystery puzzle and find clues that are well hidden as the time ticks to end the game and kill the them, are the most popular and interesting productions for all audience members who suffer form stress and anxiety. For this route is one of the many forms of  escapism that allow viewers to experience some, if not all of what those people go through on daily bases through their minds. Through the games and riddles, they tend to find control, even if its just a slight portion of it.

But despite the anxiety and panic attacks that those movies come with due to the small spaces every scene is shot in and how the characters are confined in a small/narrow zone, trying their best to just survive and breathe,  it’s hard not to overthink every step and decision that is being made. Those kinds of movies and shows are based on an interactive experience that makes one want to scream and punch the screen. But what audience members are not aware of is that those productions are usually based on one’s real fear. Something that haunts them like a shadow and can’t let go of.

Yes they are movies with storylines and plots that were made using one’s rational thought and creative imagination, but they hold deeper meaning than we all anticipated. 

Escape Room (2019) 

Follows a similar theme and sequence of every other escape room based production, however the twist in this movie was the fact that what those characters and contestants were escaping from is not the room, but their own fears. The characters were chosen precisely for this game, as their personal fears were known beforehand, and that made the plot more interactive and interesting as the characters were solving the mystery of their own deep fears and not the mystery of a simple puzzle or a hidden treasure.

In the movie, each character is a survivor. A survivor of a deep fear and event that made them have a spike of darkness and an emotion that could never be forgotten easily regardless of the time that has passed. It’s stuck in their minds, and the only way to forget, is through death. For that’s the only way to numb their emotions and make it all stop.

Fear is an all-encompassing emotion and tool that plays with the mind endlessly, Just like a devoted  loyal lover who leaves for a while and comes back, fear will always remain on one’s side, until the very end when everything has been numbed.

The character development in the movie was not a quick know and go just like other productions. It was a slow phased process that made the audience think twice about the characters, as  flashbacks of their past were provided from time to time to fill in the gap of the storyline. The first being the character’s past version prior to the event that made fear be a loyal companion. And the second version is based on their present self, in the escape room, facing their fears through delusional games and puzzles.

Escape Room Tournament of the champions, No escape, No exit, No Escape Room, and many others, all follow a similar theme of escapism. And that leaves audience members in a limbo of whether those movies were made to escape one’s reality? Or mind?.  A tough question with an even tougher answer to come up with, it requires self-analysis and the courage to take the risk of stepping out of one’s comfort zone to face the inevitable reality that has been set upon by external factors that reside within.

Those kind of movies are based on escaping the mind, before escaping the room. And only the courageous will survive both. 

The mind is a playground that has no beginning and no end, every external factor affects the outcome of one’s actions. And nothing explains the aforesaid situation better than entertainment productions that portray every fear through an engaging experience and storylines that makes one wonder and get deep into their thoughts when the screens are nothing but an empty pitch black void.