This was a decent watch. Performances were very hammy and the dialogue involved characters repeatedly calling each other by their first name - or "Dad" - to such a degree it was almost uncomfortable. Nobody talks like that. But it was pretty funny! And maybe it carries credence to my theory behind the story. Read on and find out why, haha. Up front, I would recommend this as a fun movie to watch with friends, but despite my speculations below, which I had a lot of fun considering, it's not exactly great, so watch it with an open mind (if you're so inclined)!
The story has perhaps most of one leg to stand on. Here's my armchair theory: they all ghosts. The empty drive outside the house despite the waiting participants gave me an instant "they're actually all dead!" vibe.
My thinking is that when the car broke down, Dad and Karen are standing in the road - while what actually appears to be a TOW TRUCK which would be helpful given the circumstances - roars by, they got slammed and killed via vehicular manslaughter. A clue is in the line, "you could have been killed!", Dad says when he grabs Karen's arm when she's glued to her phone. So likely that's their cause of death - they are, from that point on, ghosts in limbo. The swooning closeups on Betsy lend an otherworldly tone when she describes the escape house - everyone these two encounter is inhabiting shared limbo.
The house is in fact perpetuating The Inventor's experiments, I do believe. He wanted to commune with the other side for whatever reason, and created an inescapable trap for ghosts for him to experiment upon - and he definitely experimented on live people in various ways in order to determine some way of communicating with the dead, as we see in the morgue. He is long gone, but his sadistic, single-minded, monstrous pursuits and experimental trials on living people probably presented - when he kicked - in his becoming a ghost monster, continuing to turn the gears, maintaining his machine of study, and becoming an actual horror-creature within the ghostly realm inside his house.
None of the other participants provide a lot in terms of their own deaths. Having only watched once, I'm thinking that probably their end is echoed by what happens in the "game." (Melanie even has a line about that they're all living echoes.)
Tyler was probably cheating on Melanie - why else would he be so preoccupied with his phone when theyre both on an outing for her birthday? - and it destroyed their relationship, and he hung himself. Melanie perhaps replayed the moment in her mind, discovering his body - being a ghost she was unwilling to recognize the reason for the perpetual loop, entering and reentering the same room over and over - and likely originally suffered a similar fatal accident from feeling so distraught and disoriented by his suicide.
Andrew, I think, is probably some sort of rehabilitated ex-con. He's got charisma and chutzpah, but talks about socialization therapy and fixates on the barred windows, besides being unnerved by small, enclosed spaces. He just gets grabbed in the duct, so nothing to infer there, but his original death was probably incurred by his trying to help someone, to turn a new leaf, and it didn't pay off. I enjoyed his character the most.
I'd imagine Josie was an assistant to The Inventor and he turned her into an experiment one way or another, culminating in exploratory tummy surgery.
The shared loops, revisiting places, and trippy elements? I suppose probably that's just a side effect of being a ghost trapped in a mad scientist's experiment, one that probably digs into whatever possible means could force a ghost into interacting with the physical world and stay kept in The Inventor's clutches, while still, too, clinging to recently retained memories.
It's kinda like Silent Hill 2, I think, how everyone there interacts with this horror space and perceives it differently. (Also retrieving a key from a yucky toilet is very Silent Hill and I loved that!)
About the perpetual naming of characters in the dialogue. Initially it's a cute pissy reaction from Karen - Dad is constantly trying to get her attention ("Karen. Karen. Karen. Karen! Won't you just talk to me? For a second? Please?"), and she responds by calling him "Dad" constantly. Probably as a sneering reminder to him, too, that they hardly have any relationship. But as the movie goes on, it's *incessant* these characters referring to each other by name, it's crazy! Maaaaybe it's just ghosts sticking a pin into an identity. They don't want to forget or lose themselves or the people they value.
I missed when Andrew introduced himself (I, um... don't think he ever actually did), but he seems reluctant to admit himself to the others. Reinforces my theory about him, I think. Once he starts acting alongside them, a part of the team, is when they start calling him by his name. His desire to do better is who he is now, rather than the person he had been and how he had defined himself for most of his life, probably with shame and disgust.
But it may just be weird writing, I just don't know!
I've probably given this time-sink a bit more than its due. But that's okay, given it's a helluva lot better than most flicks with horror tags I've seen recently. I enjoyed watching it, and I didn't find it to be as pointless as most other reviewers seem to have found it. I liked the ideas, but the execution could have been better. Plus, the actual escape room elements were really fun and totally aligned with real life escape room logic, btw. I enjoyed this one.