With “Escape” on W9, French fiction takes the risk of playing escape games on TV -
Cecile ROGUE / W9
The French series
Escape
is broadcast on a Tuesday evening on W9 and plunges a group of friends into a more personal and dangerous escape game than expected
Escape games inspire fiction and even more horror films
From the cult film
Cube
to the miniseries
The Third Day,
theatrical staging, immersive theater and life-size role-play mix and match to offer new experiences
Horrific, scientific, historical, in BDSM mode or with cats, at the Montpellier Opera or FC Nantes, to save Captain Dreyfus or "kill" Macron, escape games have become a lasting entertainment, with more than 800 brands for 2,000 theaters and as many scenarios in 560 cities in France.
He even adapted to the health crisis with escape games… by videoconference.
Nothing better for team building, aperitifs (zoom) or birthday parties.
This is also the gift made by a group of friends to Vladimir for his 35 years in
Escape
, fiction in two episodes broadcast Tuesday evening on W9.
Lose the game or lose the life
Escape
is not the first series or film to capture the phenomenon.
Several sitcoms and comedies have had their escape game episodes, to have fun as well as to test and reconnect:
The Big Bang Theory, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Modern Family, 2 Broke Girls
… But fiction prefers escape games to slip away.
This is the case with the W9 series.
Vlad, his wife, his partner, his best friend and the latter's girlfriend enter a room on the theme of the Palace of Versailles and quickly realize that they are not there by chance, that they are being targeted. .
The mystery is as much in the room, with puzzles to solve, as between them, with secrets to reveal.
It is no longer just the possibility of losing the game, but of losing your life.
Coins and traps
It is no coincidence that the first “official” escape game films were horror films.
Finally “official”, just because they directly cite escape games in their title.
The best known,
Escape Game
, released in 2019, tells how individuals who do not know each other either from Eve or Adam receive the same invitation to participate in an escape room.
A waiting room that catches fire, a cabin near a frozen lake, a shrinking library… They move from one thematic - and deadly - room to another in an attempt to survive and to understand who is after their lives.
Attention spoilers, the film does not give all the answers and teases a Puzzle Master, who will be back in the sequel in 2022.
"Saw", an escape game before its time?
The director of series B, Will Wernick, felt the right vein, and followed in quick
succession Escape Room
and
Follow Me
, two films available on VOD where young people must escape as many rooms as traps.
We can also quote the Belgian but in English
Play or Die
based on the novel
Puzzle
by Franck Thilliez.
If these pelches are inspired by escape games, they are mainly reminiscent of horrific sagas like
Saw
and
Hostel
.
Wasn't the
first
Saw
an escape game before its time?
Two men wake up tied up in a bathroom and have to follow the Jigsaw's guidelines to survive… Looks like it.
And the escape games will do it well with rooms adapted from its universe by the Parisian brand LeavinRoom
.
"It's just a game, it's just a game"
But one film in particular foreshadows the escape game, its rooms, its enigmas, its team spirit to get by, it is
Cube
by Vincenzo Natali in 1997. Sign of the times, a Japanese remake is in preparation and impossible not to think about it in front of the Spanish film
La Plateforme
on Netflix.
The same year that
Cube
also released the aptly named
The Game
, which blurred the line between film staging and life-size role-playing games, of which the escape game is the offshoot.
David Fincher's film strongly inspired the theater company Punchdrunk, which specializes in immersive theater.
We owe them the references and blockbusters of the genre that are
Sleep No More
in a hotel and
The Drowned Man
in film studios, unfortunately unheard of in France.
Jude Law is a celebrity, get him out of there!
Their latest tour de force interests us all the more here as it is a series.
Well, sort of.
Indeed,
The Third Day
is a six-episode HBO miniseries where Jude Law arrives on an island off the British coast and discovers the curious lifestyle of its inhabitants, like the movie
The Wicker Man
.
The specificity of the series is that it is divided into two parts, “Summer” and “Winter”, with an “Autumn” segment in the middle, making it a 12-hour live and immersive performance broadcast live and performed by Punchdrunk.
You had to see it, and live it, to believe it.
Jude Law is still alive, even if he died, but something new, indefinable happened there.
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W9
Escape Game
Horror movie
Series