Summary
More Scary Movie than an actual scary movie, Escape The Undertaker doesn’t meet the same standard as fellow interactive movie, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. But the silly nature of the film may be of interest to younger WWE fans.
This review for the Netflix interactive special, Escape The Undertaker, does not contain spoilers.
Mix Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and the Scary Movie franchise together. What would you get? Well, Escape The Undertaker wouldn’t be far from the end result.
The reason for that is because Escape The Undertaker is a choose-your-own-adventure interactive film. A WWE production, it follows Big E, Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods, and Mark Calaway as The Undertaker. The plot follows the three lead characters as they search The Undertaker’s eerie mansion in a quest for an urn that apparently has the power of positivity. Whether they achieve this goal, though, is all down to you!
Despite the horror genre categorization, Escape The Undertaker is for the most part a fun and light-hearted watch. That, as a result, doesn’t provide many (if any) scares. So if a frightening interactive experience is what you want, look elsewhere!
As with any movie that adopts the choose your own adventure concept, the run time varies. If you choose the “I’m Too Scared” ending, you find that the movie ends lasts a mere 2-3 minutes. In comparison, the longest-form Escape The Undertaker lasts approximately 30 minutes, which still isn’t long, so it could easily get watched/played during some free time in an afternoon. And don’t worry if you make the wrong “choice”, as there is always the option to “Undo Last Choice”. The biggest criticism is that there aren’t as many “choices” as there could have been.
Escape The Undertaker has a good concept through the use of the choose your own adventure structure. Personally, I hope that Netflix makes more interactive movies as they’re fun to experience. Although to appeal to a wider audience, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to create one with a more mature storyline, that allows the audience to be invested fully. Currently, the measures in how the audiences can navigate themselves are limiting. But maybe (and hopefully) Escape The Undertaker is just a taster of what is to come.
You can stream Escape the Undertaker exclusively on Netflix.
