Escape from Tomorrow (2013) Directed by Randy Moore

This movie takes you on a nice and enjoyable surrealistic trip! Well, for most part anyway.

I have to say, I liked this movie better than I expected and it was totally different from what I expected as well. It was far more psychedelic and yet also more story driven than I expected. I expected a movie with a more guerrilla type of filmmaking style to it but the movie as it is is a very stylish and perfectly crisp looking one, with an easy to follow narrative.

This movie is of course best known for the controversy behind it, even way before its release already. It's a movie entirely set and shot in Disney World and Disneyland but without the consent and knowledge of Disney, which is a big thing. But let me just tell you; it doesn't really matter. The fact that this movie is set in Disneyland really doesn't add anything to the overall story or 'point' of this movie. It may just as well could have been set in any other random theme park, or even a totally fictional one. It's not really a movie that's trying to make a point against Disney or poking thing at things that are Disney related. It's merely using its settings to create an eerie, dark fairytale, type of atmosphere, which works out well but again, they could have used basically any other random theme park for it, with or without consent and it would have achieved the same thing. Most of its important scenes are shot outside of Disneyland and Disney World anyway, with only real actors involved.

Thing that the movie does well is mess with your head. You don't really know when something is real or when something is just a figment of the main character's imagination. That's also the reason why I wasn't very fond of the movie its second half. In the second half you just KNOW things are all crazy and not real at all. It's also then when things suddenly become less interesting and engaging to watch and I kind of lost interest in the movie. I just couldn't care about any of its characters anymore and wasn't all that curious and interested to see how the movie would end and wrap things up. A real shame, since I truly enjoyed and admired the first half of the movie.

I'm therefor also still willing to give this movie the benefit of the doubt and still call it a good and perfectly watchable one, for just about everybody. It's a perfectly accessible movie, that's visually great to look at and interesting to follow, for its first half anyway.

7/10

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