Shot mostly inside Disney theme parks without the company’s knowledge or permission, Escape from Tomorrow surprisingly found distribution after debuting to some positive buzz at the Sundance Film Festival. Legally, Disney decided a better approach than litigation would be to not acknowledge the film’s existence at all. So it was released unchallenged via video-on-demand services as well as in limited theaters across the country on October 11th. But is the film good enough to overshadow the amazing story of how it was made?

Storytelling

The story opens on the balcony of a resort hotel near Disney World, with Space Mountain situated in the background. Jim has just lost his job over the phone, but decides not to tell his family so they can enjoy one final day in the park. Dreading the future, Jim’s imagination runs wild as he enters the Magic Kingdom and all of his insecurities about his wife, kids, and career come to the forefront. The rest of the film is comprised of Jim seeing evil everywhere he looks, and being presented with temptations throughout the park. The second act tends to bog down, as Jim spends most of it chasing two young French girls that caught his eye on the monorail that morning. There are a lot of scenes repeating the same actions over and over again, as he jumps from ride to ride following the girls. There is also some additional drama with him having issues watching out for his kids while his mind unravels. All of this doesn’t make for a very interesting middle part of the movie.



The final half of the film introduces some shady characters for Jim to interact with. While there are some big reveals, the payoffs don’t quite land because they were hinted at so vaguely earlier on. The film even adds a creepy scientist character to help explain things in the grand scheme, but there is still so much left unanswered, it would have benefited the story to stay vague in regards to the big picture, while doing a better job foreshadowing the important plot reveals early on, and avoiding the annoying trope of the over-explaining bad guy altogether.
 

Presentation

The most impressive aspect of the film is the aesthetic. The filmmakers could have made their lives easier and featured shaky cameras thrown together in a “found footage” sort of way, but they instead went for a polished look. There is little shaky-cam, unless it’s called for, and for the most part, it appears to be a film shot with some planning and permits. However, this is not at all the case, and is detailed in a disclaimer at the start of the movie.The film is shot entirely in black & white and looks beautiful. It visually reminded me of watching black & white Disney comedies like The Shaggy Dog and The Absent-Minded Professor, even down to the old-school credits at the beginning. Also attributing to the Disney feel is the film’s score, which is mostly a take on the magical sounding Disney scores from their classic live action films. The sound quality is fantastic as well, even though they had to deal with a lot of music in the parks that needed to be removed due to copyright issues.It appears they still had to utilize some green screen sets for a few scenes that must have been too involved to shoot live in the park, and those stand out poorly. Outside of that, most of the effects look good for a low budget film and work well to show us what the park looks like through Jim’s eyes. Jim’s rides on “It’s a Small World” and “Soarin’ Over California” are particularly memorable. Also, a scene using the well-known Epcot ball towards the end of the film looks like a weird but effective cross between Disney and Silent Hill. 

Performances

While the look of the film was excellent despite the way the movie was shot, the performances suffered because of it. When it’s obvious they had time to set up and work on a scene the performances are fine by low budget movie standards. But for scenes that take place on rides or in lines, the acting can be terrible at times. It’s obvious they had a limited amount of time to get a good take, as much of those scenes are rushed and feel out of balance with the scenes that came just before or after. 


Some over-the-top performances from the “villain” characters are cheesy but at least worked better, since it matches up with villainous Disney movie characters. Unfortunately, we spend so much time with Jim and his family that their performances are what I recall most and it wasn’t memorable in a good way.

My Take

When it was all over, I was a little let down. I had such high hopes, and while the look of the film delivered, the story and acting kept getting in the way of an overall entertaining experience. As an experimental film, it has to compete with the early works of David Lynch and Darren Aronofsky, but there was too much going against this production to make it work on even a fraction of the level of those other artists. 

While I generally can’t recommend the movie, I still think it’s worth watching if you’re a die-hard Disney fan, just to see the park through the eyes of the filmmakers. That does, after all, happen to be the movie’s strongest point. This film needs the Disney World setting to get the filmmakers’ ideas across, as setting it in a generic theme park doesn’t have the same impact as seeing beloved Disney characters getting an eerie, demonic makeover. It’s just too bad Disney never would have approved the idea legitimately anyway, because it seems a lot more focus went into getting this made at all, at the expense of getting some of the other aspects of the movie right.

Acquisition Method: Streaming Rental. Escape from Tomorrow is currently available as a streaming rental on Amazon Instant Video and via on-demand from cable TV providers. It can also be purchased or rented as a digital download from various movie download services, or be seen in select theaters for a limited time.