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‘Insidious: The Last Key’ director elevates horror genre in ‘Escape Room’

Adam Robitel, the director of Columbia Pictures’ new suspense thriller Escape Room, sure knows a thing or two about creating horror hits for the big screen. After all, Robitel directed the record-breaking Insidious: The Last Key, which has grossed a whopping $167 million worldwide.

Escape Room began when producer Ori Marmur first tried out an escape room with his family and saw a potential for a film that plays out as much as a psychological thriller as a horror movie, by featuring an escape room with a twist. From the producers of the Fast & Furious series, Escape Room is about six strangers who find themselves in circumstances beyond their control and must use their wits to find the clues… or die.

“The good escape rooms are really cinematic: you go into a cold war bunker, you’re rooting through CIA dossiers, then you hit a button and suddenly a hidden projector turns on with a blue light and you see a map,” says Robitel. “These rooms are well art-directed so I saw the potential for a visually appealing film.”

In the film, the six characters — played by Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Jay Ellis, Tyler Labine, and Nik Dodani — have chosen to be part of the escape roomexperience and, they will discover, there’s a mystery that links them all together. “They all chose to be there — they haven’t been kidnapped or forced there,” notes Marmur. That said, they all get more than they bargained for. “They all go there expecting one thing and then it becomes a very different thing entirely.”

And as they solve the puzzles and the plot of each of the individual rooms, they begin to see there is a larger puzzle to solve — why they chose to be there. As it turns out, they all have something in common. “The idea of strangers being brought together for mysterious reasons, thrust in this environment and having to work together, was a really cool idea,” says Robitel.

Jay Ellis, Taylor Russell and Logan Miller star in ESCAPE ROOM.

“Along the way, Original Film, Ori Marmur, and Neal Moritz (producer), they always said, ‘Let’s really try to elevate the genre and infuse a movie like this, which has great visuals, with great psychology, too,’” adds Robitel. “So whether it’s the Ice Room, Billiard Room, Tile Room — each of these rooms represents the psychological machinations and the trauma of each character… Everybody has fired on all cylinders to make this film. It’s been fantastic.”

Columbia Pictures presents an Original Film production, Escape Room. Starring Taylor Russell, Logan Miller, Deborah Ann Woll, Jay Ellis, Tyler Labine, Nik Dodani, with Yorick van Wageningen.  Directed by Adam Robitel (Insidious: The Last Key).  Produced by Neal H. Moritz (The Fast and the Furious franchise) and Ori Marmur.  Screenplay by Bragi Schut and Maria Melnik.  Story by Bragi Schut.  

In Philippine cinemas February 27, Escape Room is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International. #EscapeRoomMovie

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Filipino artist wins ‘Insidious: The Last Key’ alternative poster contest

The Insidious: The Last Key art activation campaign that Blumhouse Productions, the powerhouse studio of blockbuster thrillers (The Purge, Get Out, Split) collaborated with the open-source creative platform Talenthouse, has recently ended with Blumhouse’s Jason Blum himself selecting the five winners from participants all over the world.

Among the winning entries is created by Filipino visual artist, Adriann Delmo from Cavite. He is joined in the winners’ circle by artists from Peru, Ecuador, Spain and France.

The five winning pieces of artwork are featured in Insidious: The Last Key’s international marketing campaign and received a cash prize of $2,000 each.

Hailing from Gen. Trias, Cavite, 25-year-old Adriann Delmo is a freelance graphic artist/designer and owner of T-shirt printing business.

“It took me 3 days to create my entry because I really wanted to submit something that fits the contest’s requirements,” shares Delmo.

Because the movie shows the character Dr. Elise Rainier as a child and uncovers some of her history, artists were encouraged to create stylized alternate posters as if the movie were being realized in the 50s, 60s, 70s, “and that became my ultimate concept, to interpret the poster with a vintage feel,” Delmo explains.

Visual artists from around the world were invited to create artwork inspired by the dark, haunting, and mysterious universe of Insidious: The Last Key.

Insidious: The Last Key is the newest installment in the Insidious franchise coming to Philippine cinemas January 17. In the supernatural thriller, which welcomes back franchise standout Lin Shaye as Dr. Elise Rainier, the brilliant parapsychologist faces her most fearsome and personal haunting yet: in her own family home.

The film is written by co-creator Leigh Whannell (Saw), who wrote the trilogy and directed Chapter 3; produced by Insidious regulars Jason Blum (The Purge series, Get Out, Split), Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity) and co-creator James Wan (The Conjuring, Furious 7); and directed by series newcomer Adam Robitel (The Taking of Deborah Logan).

Shaye is joined by the returning Angus Sampson as Tucker and Leigh Whannell as Specs. They welcome to the cast Josh Stewart as Gerald Rainier, Caitlin Gerard as Imogen, Kirk Acevedo as Ted, , Bruce Davison as Christian, Spencer Locke as Melissa, Tessa Ferrer as Audrey, Ava Kolker as Young Elise, Hana Hayes as Elise as a teen, and Marcus Henderson as Detective Whitfield.

Insidious: The Last Key is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

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Fear comes home in ‘Insidious: The Last Key’

Columbia Pictures’ new horror-thriller Insidious: The Last Key takes audiences back to the beginnings of the Insidious franchise and to Elise’s haunted childhood. There, Elise (Lin Shaye) discovered she had supernatural powers, suffered cruelty at the hand of her father and discovered the place of pure evil known as The Further.

“This is an origin story,” says producer Jason Blum. “It shows how Elise came to be, and how she got her special powers. The first 20 minutes of Insidious: The Last Key take place in 1954, but the rest of the movie takes place right before Insidious starts. So, it’s actually Insidious: The Last Key, Insidious: Chapter 3, Insidious and then Insidious: Chapter 2.”

The popularity of the franchise always made the possibility of a fourth Insidious film intriguing to Blum, but the decision was also up to creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell. “How it usually works,” Blum offers, “is that I call Leigh [Whannell], and say, ‘We’d love to do another one.’ But I don’t force people, and I wouldn’t want to deal with anyone else unless they blessed it. Leigh had an idea about creating a film around Elise’s character for a long time, and we were all very committed to that.”

“We’ve made a lot of scary movies,” Blum continues, “and the hardest thing on a scary movie is for the actor who is communicating to the audience to be believable. No matter how you dress it up, in some way, they’re saying, ‘Ghosts are real. They exist. They’re scary.’ No matter how good the writing is—God bless Leigh Whannell—it’s hard to deliver those lines and believe them. And Lin is incredibly good at saying things that make no sense, and making them feel like they make complete sense.”

Lin Shaye is joined by the returning Angus Sampson as Tucker and Leigh Whannell as Specs. They welcome to the cast Josh Stewart as Gerald Rainier, Caitlin Gerard as Imogen, Kirk Acevedo as Ted, , Bruce Davison as Christian, Spencer Locke as Melissa, Tessa Ferrer as Audrey, Ava Kolker as Young Elise, Hana Hayes as Elise as a teen, and Marcus Henderson as Detective Whitfield.

The film is written by co-creator Leigh Whannell (Saw), who wrote the trilogy and directed Chapter 3; produced by Insidious regulars Jason Blum (The Purge series, Get Out, Split), Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity) and co-creator James Wan (The Conjuring, Fast & Furious 7); and directed by series newcomer Adam Robitel.

In Philippine cinemas January 17, 2018, Insidious: The Last Key is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.

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WATCH: ‘Insidious: The Last Key’ unlocks first official trailer

Enter the red door and watch the new trailer of Columbia Pictures’ Insidious: The Last Key below.

The creative minds behind the hit Insidious trilogy return for Insidious: The Last Key. In the horror thriller, which welcomes back franchise standout Lin Shaye as Dr. Elise Rainier, the brilliant parapsychologist faces her most fearsome and personal haunting yet: in her own family home.

The film is written by co-creator Leigh Whannell (Saw), who wrote the trilogy and directed Chapter 3; produced by Insidious regulars Jason Blum (The Purge series, Split), Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity) and co-creator James Wan (The Conjuring, Furious 7); and directed by series newcomer Adam Robitel (The Taking of Deborah Logan).
Shaye is joined in the cast by Angus Sampson, Whannell, Josh Stewart, Caitlin Gerard, Kirk Acevedo, Javier Botet, Bruce Davison, Spencer Locke, Tessa Ferrer, Ava Kolker and Marcus Henderson.

Steven Schneider, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Charles Layton, Bailey Conway Anglewicz, Couper Samuelson and Whannell serve as executive producers. Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions (“SPWA”) produced and financed Insidious: The Last Key. Sony Pictures Releasing and SPWA’s Stage 6 Films will distribute the film outside of the U.S.

Opening in Philippine cinemas in 2018, Insidious: The Last Key is distributed by Columbia Pictures, local office of Sony Pictures Releasing International.