Escape Room ★ ¹/₂

Take 1997’s Cube, mix it up with the Saw series, soften it up with a PG-13 rating and voila! You’re left with the quintessential January stinker, Escape Room. After a flash-forward introduction and a laborious, lazy set-up that only manages to introduce us to three of the film’s six co-stars, this psychological thriller from director Adam Robitel (Insidious: The Last Key) places them within the deadly room of the title. We’ve already met—and witnessed the lone character traits of—socially inept physics student Zoey (Taylor Russell of Netflix’s Lost in Space reboot), cutthroat businessman Jason (Jay Ellis of HBO’s Insecure) and alcoholic loser Ben (Love, Simon’s Logan Miller), each of whom received a package containing a puzzle box that spat out an invitation to partake in an escape challenge promising $10,000 to the winner. Once all three converge on the deserted industrial park, they enter a secure room in a nondescript office building, where we’re finally introduced to the other three contestants: scarred (both physically and mentally) Iraq War veteran Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll of Netflix’s Daredevil), Appalachian trucker Mike (Tucker and Dale vs Evil’s Tyler Labine) and escape-room enthusiast Danny (Nik Dodani of CBS’s Murphy Brown reboot). Then the game begins. And—surprise!—it’s deadly. As characters begin to drop off in bloodless, teen-friendly ways, we soon come to discover the game is funded by—gasp!—immoral billionaires congregating on the dark web to get off on others’ suffering. Think about that before you buy your ticket. (At Assembly Row, Boston Common, Fenway, Seaport, South Bay and in the suburbs.)