Rewatch/Rewind: Escape From Tomorrow

"The most dangerous movie of 2013" was this wet fart of a supposed satire.

(Rewatch/Rewind is a feature in which I revisit a film that once made an impression on me, but I haven’t watched in at least a decade. Spoilers should be expected.) 

Coincidentally, I made that same face while watching this movie.

When you get to be a certain age (old), you start to become immune to the hype surrounding a film. You come to realize that a horror movie breathlessly described¹ as “the most terrifying movie you’ll see this year” will probably just have a couple of jump scares in it. A movie coasting on being “the most erotic film of the decade” might feature one or two relatively restrained (and not in a fun way) sex scenes. It’s all just good PR, getting butts in seats for that all-important opening weekend.

I still occasionally fall for it. Sometimes, a thing will actually live up to the hype: for example, while Skinamarink didn’t drive me to the brink of insanity with terror, as some claimed it would, it did give me goosebumps. Other times, I’m shamelessly tricked, as with 2013’s Escape From Tomorrow. Following a well-received screening at Sundance, the buzz surrounding it was impossible to ignore, especially considering how it was made. Writer/director Randy Moore surreptitiously filmed much of it at Disney parks, without consent, which was unsurprising considering the movie was intended as a dark satire depicting Disney as a malevolent force that engages in both mind control and human trafficking.

Everything about it, including an effectively creepy trailer, seemed very promising. While I had a perfectly delightful time when I went to both Disney World and Disneyland, I also thought that any place that describes itself as “The Happiest Place on Earth” while also copyrighting that phrase and laying to waste anyone who dares to infringe upon it, could probably use some wry skewering. The weird vibe coming from Escape From Tomorrow was right up my alley, and it became one of my most eagerly anticipated movies of the year.

And then I watched it.

It’s the last day of a family’s Disney vacation, and thank God for that, because they look like they’ve spent the last week being held at gunpoint. Even the children have the hollow-eyed stares of war orphans. Father Jim (Roy Abramsohn) starts the day by learning that he’s lost his job, and that news sends him spiraling into some sort of mental health crisis. He starts having bizarre hallucinations, and becomes obsessed with a pair of flirty teenage girls, who openly encourage him to abandon his kids and follow them around the park.

This first and foremost is the biggest problem with Escape From Tomorrow: the protagonist, the person the audience is supposed to invest their time and attention in, is an unlikable asshole, and fully two-thirds of the movie is devoted to his combination nervous breakdown/midlife crisis. Jim and his wife, Emily (Elena Schuber), who’s a complaining, impossible-to-please shrew, clearly hate each other, and I guess that’s supposed to be funny, that this miserable couple and their whiny kids are stuck together in a place in which it is against local laws to express unhappiness.

ANYWAY, as it becomes a matter of great importance that Jim get into the tiny shorts of the nubile teens² as soon as possible, things get increasingly weirder and dangerous at the park. He’s hypnotized and raped by a mysterious woman, who tells him that the Disney Princesses are all sex workers who are sold to rich Asian businessmen (he later learns that she too used to be Princess, but might have killed a child). When he decides at the last minute to decline an invitation to join the teenagers back at their hotel room (uh huh, keep stroking, buddy, you’re almost there), one of them spits in his face, giving him something called “cat flu.” Meanwhile, in what may be a folie a deux (or not), Emily also seems to be in the midst of some kind of breakdown (though that may be because her husband is a gigantic, slobbering creep who follows young girls around like a dog following a meat delivery truck), and the family splits up.

Then, in what’s supposed to be the big “holy shit, whaaaaaaat” moment, Jim is kidnapped and taken to an underground laboratory beneath Spaceship Earth³, where it’s revealed that for nearly his entire life Jim has unwittingly been part of an elaborate mind control experiment, starting with the first time he visited a Disney park as a little boy. Disney has been engaging in an advanced, almost supernatural form of brainwashing, with the ability to both extract memories and fantasies directly out of people’s minds and replace them with new ones.

Though Jim manages to escape the laboratory, before he can leave Disney World altogether he dies of cat flu in his hotel room. The movie ends with another version of Jim arriving at the park with a different family, presumably starting the cycle of whatever is supposed to be happening anew.

Maybe? I’m kind of guessing here. All I know for certain is that, if you listen carefully, you can almost hear the moist sounds of someone jerking off, followed by a groan of pleasure.

Credit where credit is due, few movies are as gleefully incoherent as Escape From Tomorrow. It’s almost impressive how little effort was made into trying to pull this jumble of faux-philosophical (and deeply smug) ideas into something comprehensible. Half vague attempt at pointed satire and half horror movie, it’s nothing if not extremely pleased with itself, high on its own supply of forced, phony edginess.

Clearly, Randy Moore sees himself as far smarter than the average Disney consumer, whom he perceives to be an ignorant rube blind to the fact that they’re being manipulated by Big Mouse. No one really wants to go to Disney World, you see, they’ve been programmed to think they do. These poor saps don’t even realize what’s happening to them! It’s like he watched They Live and thought “How can I do this, but shitty.”

Is there, as Escape From Tomorrow presupposes, something weird and creepy about Disney World’s dedication to maintaining its spotless image as a place of pure, mindless happiness? Of course there is. I know the rumors. I’ve heard how no one is ever declared legally dead on the property, even if they keel over from a massive heart attack right outside the Haunted Mansion. I’m not sure what some shithead’s marital problems and smutty sexual fantasies have to do with that, but fine. I couldn’t quite follow how that connects to every single woman in it being either a demanding bitch or a sexually aggressive nymphet, but sure. I’m a little vague on where the obese man on a mobility scooter who constantly harasses Jim ties into it, but I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation somewhere. Then again, as I said I’ve enjoyed my time in Disney parks, so I’m probably too stupid to get it.

Perhaps the funniest part is when the handful of critics who actually liked this thing excitedly speculated how Disney itself would handle it. Surely their team of stormtrooper lawyers would clamp down on it immediately, not just because of copyright infringement, but because it was “too dangerous” for the general public to see. Right, the movie where a guy fantasizes about seeing a woman’s naked boobs on the Soarin’ ride might make people burn their FastPasses and collectible pins, sure thing. In reality, it was more likely they realized that it sucked, it wasn’t worth a single billable hour fighting it, and that it was a mercy just to let it die largely unseen.

Because I am nothing if not benevolent, I will say that Escape From Tomorrow’s stark black and white cinematography is visually interesting⁴ and gives everything the look of a German expressionist nightmare. “What if this nice and sweet thing was actually eeeeeeeevilllllll,” while hardly original, is always a fun idea to play around with. Randy Moore had the potential to make something weird and interesting and even actually dangerous, and then decided to go with an interminable combination of “I hate my wife” anti-comedy and a nonsensical sci-fi psychological thriller. It’s all edge, but no point.

1. Often by Stephen King, bless his heart.

2. At times it seems like the girls, with their breathy French accents and skimpy outfits (not to mention that they’re nothing short of delighted that this middle-aged shlub is sniffing around them), are just products of Jim’s sweaty fantasies, and yet Emily can definitely see them.

3. a/k/a the big ball near the entrance of EPCOT

4. Though if I had made this movie, which at least attempts to play into the concept of manufactured memories, I’d have probably used a blown out color filter to resemble old childhood photographs.