[Film Review] Escape The Undertaker (2021)

Halloween is a great time for a haunted house adventure, full of swirling fog, creepy basements and secret passageways. This October, the world of wrestling has embraced the spirit of the spooky season with the release of WWE’s Escape The Undertaker, a short interactive film on Netflix. 

The premise is simple - wrestling legend The Undertaker is holed up in his eerie mansion, guarding the urn that has made many an appearance at matches over the years, and which  is now said to be a source of great power. Babyface tag team The New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods) have decided that harnessing the power of the urn, combined with their own trademark Power of Positivity, will make them unstoppable. But upon their arrival at the mansion, they soon discover that this will be no easy task, and to make it out in one piece they must face not only The Undertaker’s tricks and traps, but also their own darkest fears…

Our heroic trio grapple with a host of haunted-house tropes: sinister paintings, weird mist, a spooky library - and are split up and reunited before a final showdown with The Undertaker. Sadly, this fight is something of an anticlimax, relying almost entirely on some hokey special effects rather than the genuine skills of four wrestlers (three in their prime). Granted, Escape The Undertaker is a narrative story, not a match, but it seems a waste not to showcase at least some of these performers’ skillset. You don’t need a ring to do so - look at backstage and street fights at wrestling shows, or even the punch-up scene between Keith David and Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live, which is essentially a wrestling match disguised as a fist fight. 

Escape The Undertaker is largely just silly, haunted house gags, but it does have one moment with a hint of real emotion. When the New Day are challenged to face their fears, Xavier and Big E contend with pretty standard Halloween scares, but Kofi is trapped in a dark void, confronted by voices whispering his deepest insecurities and clips on a TV of WWE boss Vince McMahon telling him he’ll never be championship material. Unfortunately, this moment never has a chance to land with the audience, as it’ll either a) be lacking in context and slightly baffling for non-wrestling fans or b) remind wrestling fans that they’d probably rather be watching an actual match (especially as it has distinct echoes of Wrestlemania 36’s Firefly Funhouse match, a genuinely creative, surreal masterpiece). 

Ultimately, it’s unclear who the target audience for Escape The Undertaker would be. Wrestling fans will miss the wrestling, and viewers who don’t already know the characters aren’t given much opportunity to get to know them in the 30-minute runtime. By far the best part of the film is The New Day - their charisma and genuine friendship shines through; without them, the whole thing would be far less watchable. The choose-your-own-adventure gimmick adds a touch of novelty, but most of the choices made have little effect on the actual outcome of the story (in the interests of journalistic integrity, I watched as many variations as I could, and only one set of decisions near the end made any tangible difference). If you’re in the Halloween mood, and fancy a short and silly bit of spooky nonsense, this might be worth half an hour of your time - but I’d recommend you skip the tricks of the Undertaker mansion and treat yourself to a slice of classic Halloween Havoc instead.

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