Escape from Tomorrow
Rating – 1.5/4
*SPOILERS*
Disney. Big corporation. Big influence. Big theme parks. And a small film that no one noticed, but has gained notoriety because of how it was shot: in secret, without permission. Unfortunately, what we ended up getting was a message about the “evils” of Disney and big corporations that fell short as a result of poor execution.
The film follows the White family as they enjoy one last day at Disney World. But then things start happening to the father, Jim. He starts seeing visions of strange things. He starts becoming obsessed with two attractive French girls. And then, he discovers an evil conspiracy. And since this is a horror movie, your childhood will be ruined by the distorted Disney characters like the Seven Dwarves photo above.
Escape from Tomorrow is pretentious and boring. It wants to be a movie that exposes and takes down Disney, but doesn’t have the skills to put up a fight. It suffers from bad acting, a lack of scares, and too many factual errors that are too exaggerated for anyone to actually believe. There are also subplots about Jim getting fired from his job and rumors of a “cat virus” which are hard to follow as well. Sadly, strange occurrences and conspiracies don’t automatically make a good movie, nor do they make one scary. And Escape from Tomorrow thinks it’s being a psychological horror movie, but it just ends up being confusing. So, I guess it does end up screwing with your mind in a way.
It does, however, have many unintentionally hilarious moments due to the poor special effects and bad acting, like when a woman yells out during a sex scene, “Oh yes, feel my vagina!”
That just sounds…wrong.
There’s entertainment all right, but not in the intended way.
However, I’ll give credit where credit is due. The filmmakers and Randy Moore deserve applause for how they shot the film. With no permits to film, the whole movie was shot guerilla-style. Actors kept scripts on their phones and the crew used Canon DSLR cameras, disguised themselves as tourists, and blended in with the crowd. The black and white color grade was due to having to work around the constant natural light changes. In post-production, editors had to blur out faces and logos to avoid any privacy issues.
Moore even went as far as to edit the film in South Korea as not to attract attention or run into copyright issues. However, Disney didn’t even bother suing Moore, knowing that any lawsuit would just bring the film publicity. Unfortunately, unique filmmaking techniques don’t automatically make a film good, and Escape from Tomorrow…isn’t good. But it does get points for trying as well. It was a movie that was illegal, still got made, and got away with it.
Well, he didn’t lack ambition, that’s for sure.
Escape from Tomorrow is unique and ambitious, but is brought down by said ambition. It banked on its behind-the-scenes and method of production to bring attention and Disney didn’t bite. It is, however, a good lesson in filmmaking and it can be used as a learning tool but that’s all I can recommend. Disney clearly won this battle and as they continue to release more and more products, the shadow over this movie will keep getting larger.
But hey, it’s a small world after all.
