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Real Life ‘Escape Room’ Kills 5 People in Poland

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If you saw Adam Robitel’s Escape Room over the weekend, you know just how dangerous they can be in the movies.

Sadly, in a bit of life imitating art, five teenage girls were killed in  Poland while playing a version of the game in which people pay to be locked in a room and must work together to find a way out before time’s up.

Firefighters say a fire broke out in the attraction’s building. A heater ignited and the lack of ventilation caused the girls to asphyxiate.

The tragedy has motivated the Polish Minister of the Interior Joachim Brudziński to issue a country-wide inspection of all escape rooms for safety.

Back in America, escape attractions must be inspected before they can open to the public.

“In order to stay in business, you have to stay up with safety standards, and you have to play by the book,” said escape room designer John Denley, president of Escape Room International. “It helps everyone sleep better at night.”

Denley says that the theme of each room can differ depending on the player’s taste, but there is one thing his brand won’t do and that is lock the contestants inside. He says that does nothing but make them more aggressive.

“Any room we’ve ever built, you’re always welcome to leave room at any time, and one reason we found is because people act much differently.”

There are a number of safety precautions, including hints, that are constantly in use while players are hunkered inside.

“So we’re watching, and giving verbal clues,” he said. “If at any time someone needed to or had an emergency phone call, they would be able to leave.”

As for wiring and electronics, Denley says his rooms use low voltage devices to avoid a tragedy like the one in Poland. And staff have a responsibility to make solvers aware of emergency procedures and plans before they begin.

Jim Bullock, a retired deputy chief with the New York Fire Department  agrees, saying, “They should be telling [players] if there’s an emergency, we’ll stop game, the lights will come on and we’ll come on the PA system and we’ll show you the way out. You don’t have to give them a floor plan because it gives away the game, but you have to show them the way out,”

United States escape rooms are regulated by the stringent and watchful eye of a federal department and include a bevy of precautions including lights, sprinkler systems and multiple exits.

The fictional theatrical version which opened on January 4, follows a group of six people who must traverse a puzzling maze of Rube Goldberg type devices in order to survive.

Director Adam Robitel told iHorror last week that his movie, although the characters are in mortal danger, focuses more on the suspense and action.

“We’ve always envisioned Escape Room more in the vein of an unrelenting Hitchcockian Roller Coaster ride with perhaps a dash of Cabin in the Woods and Final Destination,”  Robitel said.

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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