Escape from Tomorrow (2013): Movie Review

Hey guys! I got a special treat for you today, something different that I hope you enjoy. Who doesn’t love Disney? The parks, the characters, the movies, the food, everything! Were our inner child is free, imagination and magic run wild together, your dreams become alive when you’re there. The happiest place on Earth indeed. But what would happen if the happiest and most magical place on Earth also had it’s set of dark secrets, would it change how you feel about it? Most probably, you would never see things the same way again and some people might treat you like you are crazy. Is there a way to escape this? Welcome to Escape from Tomorrow, where even the most innocent things have a dark side to them in this fantasy horror film which is also the debut of writer- director Randy Moore. I saw this movie but I wasn’t sure to watch it or not, I watched a trailer and the comments didn’t help much either. But I gave it a chance and I was very surprised with everything, there were many scenes where I thought ”What the hell?” ”Why in the-” ”What am I watching?”.

What captured most of my attention from this film was the fact that it was all shot at Disney World and Disney Land, but without the authorization of the Walt Disney Corporation. The crew basically disguised themselves as visitors and shot everything with Canon EOS 5D Mark II and Canon EOS 1D Mark IV cameras while riding the attractions. And there were moments in which the parks employees suspected of them, thinking they were actually paparazzi in disguise stalking a celebrity family.  Basically used guerrilla filmmaking strategies to make the project come to life and to avoid getting into trouble. Sometimes they had to ride the attractions more than once just to get the timing right, that must’ve been one big pain in the ass because of the kilometric lines you need to make to get one one ride. Also they took out the music from the rides to avoid copyright issues, they shot a few scenes with the green screen, and the director even went to South Korea to edit this film so Disney wouldn’t find out. It’s amazing all the things that went on while making this, maybe that’s why it intrigues me.

The film follows a family on their last day of their vacation at Disney World. But the entire plot focuses mostly on Jim (Roy Abramsohn), who at beginning of the film gets fired from his job and he keeps it a secret from his family : Emily (Elena Schuber), his wife, and their kids Elliot (Jack Dalton) and Sara (Katelynn Rodriguez), so he doesn’t ruin their vacation. While on the the train that takes people to the parks, he sees two French girls Isabelle (Annet Mahendru) and Sophie (Danielle Safady), and feels attracted to them ; which leads him to follow them around to some parts of the park or sometimes finds them by coincidence yet he is always looking for them even while he’s with his kids. While on some rides, Jim starts to see weird things like characters from the rides having a menacing expression, Elliot’s eyes turn entirely back, and Emily starts mocking him saying he’s not really Elliot’s real dad; she has no memory of this though. He then takes Elliot to the Buzz Lightyear ride, while Emily takes Sara to the teacups and the Dumbo ride. The Buzz Lightyear shuts down, Jim notices the two French girls and drags Elliot along to follow them to the point they ride Space Mountain. Very terrible idea because Elliot has motion sickness which leads him to throw up when they get out, as well as a fight with Emily who takes Elliot with her and Jim takes Sara to Magic Kingdom.  Sara gets shoved by the son of a handicapped man and is taken to the park nurse, who then tells Jim that some of the park visitors have been acting weird due to cat flu. The nurse even cries while saying this. While Sara is playing with another boy, Jim is approached by a woman wearing a shimmering amulet which hypnotizes him and he suddenly wakes up in the middle of having sex with that woman. Later Jim and Sara join Emily and Elliot at the pool, but when Jim sees the French girls again he tries to approach them and Emily notices. Things become very tense between them so Jim gets really drunk while the family goes to Epcot, to the point he pukes while they are on the Gran Fiesta Tour. When Emily sees the French girls walk by she argues with Jim and ends up hitting Sara in the face because she kept asking for Emily to buy her something from a kiosk. Emily leaves with Elliot, while Jim and Sara go on the Soarin’ ride, where Jim sees a half naked woman calling out to him from the screen saying they will be together again.

After the ride one of the French girls approaches Jim, asking him to go with them but when he refuses she spits on his face. Kim then notices Sara isn’t next to him, he freaks out, and then he is knocked unconscious by park guards. He then awakens inside a secret detention lab under Epcot’s Spaceship Earth, there’s a scientist (Stass Klassen) that reveals that Kim has been part of an experiment ever since he first came to Disney with his father, that his boss firing him was part of the plan along with shutting down the Buzz Lightyear ride, and that he was supposed to give Elliot to them like his own father did with him. Then he shows Jim his ”real life” which is him dressed differently and with another woman. Jim manages to escape, decapitating the scientist with the door. He searches everywhere for Sara, then goes to the mysterious woman’s suite ( the one with the amulet) she’s dressed as Maleficent and Sara is on the bed dressed like Snow White and surrounded by flowers. Sara wakes up and Jim takes her, the woman tells Jim about how she used to be a Disney princess herself but then she realized that she couldn’t be happy all the time and that bad things happen everywhere she stopped being a princess. Sara breaks her amulet and they leave. When Jim arrives to his room, he goes to the bathroom and discovers he has the cat flu (coughing up fur balls and is bleeding). In the morning Emily finds Jim sitting next to the toilet with cat eyes and a creepy grin on his face, and the toilet covered in blood. The Cleaners come and get rid of the evidence from the bathroom. They take Jim’s corpse away into their van. The movie ends with one of the Cleaners giving Elliot false memories of his vacation, along with scenes from the park.

A lot of people criticize this movie for being about propaganda, and hating on Disney. But I feel it’s something else, like when they say that ”bad things happen everywhere” and the way the mysterious woman at some point claims this as well as saying that the Disney princesses were actually prostitutes. I feel it means that everything isn’t really as simple and innocent as it seems, there’s many things beyond what we see. Many of which we may never understand completely. Also that even in the safest place in the world there could be sign of danger and evil but we may never know about it, because deep down we have faith that there is still good in the world. That’s just my interpretation of this whole project. I liked how this world of magic was then twisted with mischief and things from the adult world (sex/alcohol/prostitution) that stained the image of something we thought pure from childhood. It’s a way to see how things change from when you’re a kid to when you grow older, you begin to see things very differently.

The movie was actually featured in the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, even so the film didn’t get a lot of attention out of fear of getting into trouble with Disney. Same thing happened when it was selected for the PollyGrind Film Festival, due to legal issues. Either way it feels like Disney doesn’t care much about it, they never really did anything against it. No one knows why, maybe cause they have a good reputation and don’t feel that a film like this would ever affect their image. I don’t know, still enjoyed it regardless of other’s opinions about this. It even got a 56% in rotten tomatoes.

Hope you guys will at least watch it once, its pretty good. Honestly not that scary just disturbing and sorta scars you if you have an innocent mind.

See you guys soon!

I rate this movie 4.3/5 Mickey Mouses