Escape takes place during a beach vacation where many of the women are beautiful. A vacation setting where parties are the main event. It quickly becomes a setting of having to be prepared for death. The film maintains an eerie continuity of direction that moves it forward. Written and directed by Howard J. Ford, Escape is one of those death-trap thrillers. This onethough, is one where it sold me for the first hour and then turned into just a blur for the last thirty-minutes. A blur of over-the-top and grotesque violence, blood-spattering, and disturbing images to keep up in attempting enticement for gore—it does not do any justice to the production.

The film centers on two girls, Karla and Tamsin. Karla is played by Sarah Alexandra Marks and Tamsin is played by Ksenia Islamova. They are two friends on a beach vacation. They make it to their resort, and within moments they are targeted by a sex trafficking organization. Jude (played by Louis James) is the one that targets the girls. The boss of the organization is Andres (played by Sean Cronin). The girls land in paradise only to later find themselves in a jail cell with other girls. Together they all must fight and figure out the captor’s routine to find a chance of fleeing for safety. With the cell being below a mansion many miles away in a desert, it is not an easy task.

The film starts out with that heavy approach of vulnerability. With the girls all talking in the cell and building up a plan they all realize they were captured in the same or similar way. The two lines of survival that spoke to me with Escape were “It’s done or die,” and “Information is key.” Those two quotes are at the core of what is to be accomplished in order to find the routes of making it out alive. The writing here is unsettling. It creates adynamic for the audience to think if the situation is real or not—these events do happen in real-life. Where is the path to fight and run? Are there any sources that can be traced?

The women use their personality and flirtatious attitude to influence the minds of the criminals guarding their cell. Once one task is achieved, the maze of violence emerges. The madness of chases and all kinds of mayhem gets more grotesqueas the storyline progresses. The film thrives primarily on a lot of stabbing and gut punching. Andres begins to lose his mind as he realizes his means of making his money is beginning to backfire, as the girls have learned his territory and methods. For Karla and Tamsin though, they are still vulnerable and limited in their options for escape.

The enticement hits a low point for this film when Escape goes down the path of relying soley on life-and-death writing. Thereis no way to flee while the criminals have control over the property which is hard to navigate. It is a Tetris of risking death in the desert. From there, it is just more extreme violence and trauma. The film tries to keep its realism of being intense, which may appeal to some, but not to me. I was left lackluster by how it was so much about the violence and chases over creating a stronger foundation of plot and providing reasons for the events that happen. Two out of four stars for Escape.