‘Escape From Tomorrow’

We previously reported that the Sundance Film Festival hit Escape From Tomorrow, rather inexplicably, will be coming to theater (or VOD) near you next month.  Now comes a nifty new trailer that showcases a hallucinatory head-trip of a family vacation gone awry, secretly filmed at Walt Disney theme parks.

Directed by Randy Moore, Escape From Tomorrow tells the story of Jim (Roy Abramsohn) who learns on a Disney vacation with his family that he’s just lost his job.  Rather than fess up to his family, he decides not to ruin the trip and unwittingly goes on one of his own.  Upon its unveiling at this years Sundance Film Festival, many critics, while giving the film good notices, marked that the film would likely never be seen outside the Park City festival due to its guerrilla shooting style in the famously litigious Disney-copyrighted theme parks.

Jim’s drift into madness starts with innocent leering at two young French girls who he keeps crossing paths with, taking his mind to dark terrains where he is unsure of what is real and what isn’t at the Happiest Place on Earth.  The film leaves it up to interpretation as to whether Jim is in the midst of a nervous breakdown in this dreamlike (or nightmare-like) take of a vacation gone eerily sinister.  Likening the film to the surrealist sensibilities of filmmakers like Roman Polanski and David Lynch, The Playlist’s William Goss stated, “the Polanski-like madness clearly stems from some of the very real frustrations that families are met with in the face of overwhelming corporate homogeneity.”  The Guardian’s Damon Wise‘s four out of five star review stated, “the acting isn’t perfect (which is perhaps understandable under the circumstances), and the film’s dream states sometimes try too hard, but Escape From Tomorrow has an otherworldly atmosphere that both hooks and engages.”  The latest trailer has a lark presenting the film an effective mind-freak thrill ride, encapsulating a sense of fun, mischief and danger.  Escape From Tomorrow, will open in limited release, barring some last minute legal action from Disney, on October 11th.