TL;DR – While it dabbles in exploitation, the film never really comes together as a whole.

Disclosure – I was sent a screener of this film.

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

Escape Review –

So, to set the scene, we open with a woman running for her life in a desert as she is being chased by a truck. 24 hours earlier, while a bunch of women have arrived at a luxurious island hideaway for a holiday, at a workshop, a comically evil trafficker is setting out the rules to his henchmen. They need ten women captured to be shipped off by Friday. The women are having a blast, not knowing they are walking into danger.  

Well, there is a lot I can say about this film, but I want to highlight some of its strengths. They make the most of their shooting location on the Canary Islands, which helps the narrative or at least makes it more energetic. I also liked that, on the whole, the women were written as out of their depth but not entirely stupid. For example, realising that maybe having a wrench would be a good idea. However, I think they would have preferred being kidnapped and wearing more practical footwear.

While there are elements of this movie that do come together, when you take it as a whole, it fails on several levels. It feels like Escape is working with that exploitation cinema vibe. Women are scantily dressed, the villains are comically evil, the budget is low, and blood sprays are everywhere. However, while it is dancing in that space, it never finds the right rhythm. The villains are so comically evil that they can’t be taken seriously or so wicked that it rips you out of the film. The women are either fantastically intelligent or absolutely stupid. The narrative never finds its feet or its reason for being there.

Part of this comes down to budget. You can tell they were working within a fixed budgetary framework where some of the elements they needed didn’t come together. One example of this was the blood effects; the film went for digital over practical, but they didn’t have the budget to make the look either realistic or stylistically appropriate. Back story inserts always felt forced, the ‘searching for them’ side-plot was an unfocused mess, it felt like accents were constantly shifting, and it’s clear that they needed some extra takes because some of those line deliveries were rough. It also introduces a really inappropriate abuse subplot that was exploitative for no reason.  

In the end, do we recommend Escape? Unfortunately, not. There may have been nuggets of a good story in here, but I am not sure if they had the strength to pull it off. Have you watched Escape? Let us know what you thought in the comments below. If you liked Escape, we would recommend to you Companion.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Escape
Directed by – Howard J. Ford
Written by – Howard J. Ford
Music by – Imran Ahmad
Cinematography by – Travellian Skipaldi
Edited by –
Production/Distribution Companies – GFM, Evolution Pictures, Latitude Films & Defiant Screen Entertainment.
Starring – Sarah Alexandra Marks, Sophie Rankin, Sean Cronin, Angela Dixon, Louis James, Glenn Salvage, Ksenia Islamova, Jon-Paul Gates, Anthony Ofoegbu & Marc Danbury with Mark Haldor, Ella Starbuck, Megan Lockhurst, Hannah Baxter-Eve, Lauren Carver, Olga Roh, Alex Reece, Scott Hillier, Peter Lovstrom, Stephen Murphy, Russell Shaw, Laura Savage & Justin Hayward
Rating – Around an Australia: MA15+