12 Amazing Premises Wasted On Underwhelming Horror Films

12. Escape Room (2017) And Escape Room (2019)

Premise: Both films are about deadly escape rooms. The 2017 one concerns a group of friends out celebrating a birthday who visit an escape room that's actually a death trap. The 2019 one sees six strangers participating in a much larger-scale game for a cash prize.

Escape rooms are very popular right now and a deadly one is a great idea for a movie, but unfortunately neither of these films quite did the idea justice.

The 2017 film, which is fairly low-budget and small-scale, is a weak movie which suffers from awful pacing, a lack of thrills and bad writing and acting. It's the kind of thing which might just about fill the bill if you need something to watch something on Netflix and have literally nothing else to do, but otherwise it's a poor use of time.

The 2019 film is quite a bit better and is easily the best film on this list, but it still wasn't as good as it could've been. It runs out of steam towards the end and is heavily undermined by its PG-13 rating.

Still, a sequel for the latter film is imminent, so perhaps we'll see this premise done better soon. Just please make it R-rated.