Escape from Tomorrow

Plot synopsis:
A montage shows visitors on the rides at Walt Disney World Resort and the many visuals and animatronics that accompany the rides. It ends with a man losing his head while riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. On the last day of a family vacation at Walt Disney World, Jim White gets fired by his boss during a phone call on the balcony of the Contemporary Resort Hotel with his family. He keeps the news to himself to avoid spoiling their vacation. The family leaves their room and takes the monorail to the park, alongside two French teenagers, Isabelle and Sophie.
The chance encounters with the girls increase interests and Jim begins to pursue them, he has disturbing visions during the rides, such as the evil faces of audio-animatronic characters and his family talking badly. After fighting with Emily, Jim decides to not to take Elliot to Space Mountain (which gives Elliot motion sickness) in order to keep chasing after the French girls, Jim takes his daughter Sara to the Magic Kingdom and keeps tracking the girls, while Emily and Elliot return to the hotel. Later, the son of a wheelchair-bound man, whom Jim spotted earlier, shoves Sara, who scrapes her knee. Jim takes her to the park nurse to have Sara's knee recovered. Jim and Sara meet a mysterious woman with a glimmering amulet necklace which hypnotizes Jim. He blacks out and regains consciousness mid-coitus with the woman in her room. Afterwards, she claims that the parks' wholesome, costumed princesses are actually part of a secret prostitution ring that services "Rich Asian Businessmen". Increasingly unnerved, Jim and Sara joins his wife and son at the pool, where Jim sees the French girls. He swims closer to converse with them, but Emily sees and berates him.
His family returns to Epcot, where the tension between Jim and Emily comes to a head after a drunk Jim vomits while on the Gran Fiesta Tour. Spotting the French girls, Emily argues with Jim about his obvious interest in them and slaps Sara. Embarrassed, she returns to the hotel with Elliot, leaving Jim and Sara to ride on the Soarin' attraction at Spaceship Earth, where Jim imagines a beautiful topless woman superimposed over the ride's video footage of landscapes, who promises they will be together soon. After the ride, Sophie approaches and invites Jim to come with them. When Jim refuses, Sophie spits on his face and she walks off, Jim notices that Sara disappeared and searches frantically for her, but the park guards use a taser to knock him unconscious.
Jim awakes in a secret detention facility under Epcot's Spaceship Earth, where he sees video screens displaying pictures of the woman he imagined on the Soarin' ride and other images of events that happened earlier. A scientist enters and activates a Spaceship Earth resembling helmet, which covers Jim's head and scans him while images of what the scientist refers to as "the real Jim" appear on the screens, being himself dressed differently and apparently part of another family. The scientist discusses Jim's flights of fantasy and imagination and reveals that he is part of the experiment by the Siemens Corporation ever since he first went to the theme park as a child with his father. His boss is in on the conspiracy and his firing was all part of the plan, and so was the closure of the Buzz Lightyear ride just as he and Elliot approached the boarding area, much to Elliot's distress. The scientist also tells Jim that he had turned in Elliot to them, like Jim's father had done to him as a child.
After damaging the instrument panel with a medical ointment and decapitating the scientist, who turns out to be an android, Jim escapes from the laboratory through the sewer. While searching for Sara, Jim trips next to the wheelchair-bound man, suspects and attacks him. After realizing that he caused a scene and doubts the man's involvement, he returns to the room of the woman, where he discovers she has captured Sara, now wearing a Snow White costume. The woman rambles about her time as a character princess and tells him how bad things happen everywhere, including the decapitation at the park. She again hypnotizes Jim with the necklace, but Sara pulls it off and smashes it, freeing Jim from her spell. He returns to his hotel room and puts his family to bed. Jim suffers with digestive distress, vomits up a large amount of blood and hairballs, which he recognizes as symptoms of the cat flu and realizes that Sophie infected him. He begins to panic and bleed uncontrollably in the bathroom. Elliot enters and Jim begs him for help, but he closes the door on him.
The next morning, Emily finds Jim's corpse, which now has cat eyes and a grinning face. Disney cleaning staff arrive to remove proof of death and fill Elliot's head with false memories of riding the Buzz Lightyear attraction. They take Jim's body to the unmarked white van from the opening. Meanwhile, the valet from the video screens greets the "real Jim", accompanied by the fantasy woman and a young girl, before they check into the hotel as the valet watches the van drive away.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
And this guy is supposed to be a parent.Perhaps Moore wants us to be uncomfortable watching him, maybe there's things to be said about man's desire for young women, but it's not the kind of meaningful discomfort that really makes a viewer think, it feels thrown in there as a character quirk.
It can be interesting and engaging at times, but as a whole it doesn't really work since Moore doesn't have anything to say about the human psyche, just that this would probably be cool if a film shot in Disneyland about bad things happening existed.
If David Lynch and Terry Gilliam had a baby, and that baby grew up in an insane asylum watching Disney movies day in and day out, this is the film I would expect that individual to eventually write and direct.
Anyways, for those who don't know, this was a movie entirely shot inDisney World/Land which that alone is absolutely mind blowing.
It is the last day of Jim White's (Roy Abramsohn) vacation at Walt Disney World with his wife (Elena Schuber) and two children (Katelynn Rodriguez and Jack Dalton), he wakes up to find out he has been fired from his job.
Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Randy Moore, the majority of scenes within the movie were filmed inside Disney parks without the company even realizing it.
Pairing this concept with fascinating themes, good acting, and impressive production quality considering the circumstances, Escape From Tomorrow is a huge success.Jim White is an average everyman vacationing at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida with his wife, Emily, and their two children, Elliot and Sara.
Things for Jim continue to turn from bad to worse as he realizes that Walt Disney World may not be the "happiest place on Earth" that its slogan implies.Escape From Tomorrow essentially feels like the basic plot from The Shining, with elements of Lolita and any David Lynch surrealist film mixed in, an obviously strange mixture that works surprisingly well.
Rather than being "that movie filmed illegally at Disney World," Escape From Tomorrow is a story about corporate Disney.
The film is a dark fantasy, revolving around the White family who are on vacation at Walt Disney World when the father Jim (Roy Abramsohn) gets a phone call that he won't have a job when he comes home.
Jim begins to eye other women throughout the park, as if he is a hormonal teenager acting on masturbatory fantasies.What unfolds is a nearly-indescribably, surrealist masterpiece, largely predicated on surrealistic sequences (especially during the final act of the film), a certain level of dark comedy, absurd instances of insanity, and the outright sadness and melancholic feelings that come from the pressure and the intoxication while vacationing in the so-called "happiest place on earth." This is essentially what makes the film such a powerful work of fiction in that it takes everyone's thoughts or preconceived notions about Disney and its hugely commercialized theme parks and twists our perception of them entirely.
That would be soul-crushing.Escape from Tomorrow clicked with me because it functions strongly as being a disturbing venture due to its neo-noir cinematography, the intoxicating qualities of Disneyworld which looks like the poster-child for consumerism gone wrong, and the seriously tense and unpredictable story of a typical family facing atypical circumstances.
The only downfall in an otherwise near-masterpiece is that I wish the film had stuck with its original roots of being a nightmarish vacation to the happiest place on Earth, rather than evolving into a surrealistic trance filled with chaotic circumstances and deeply benign visions of darkness.I conclude by saying I have never been to Disneyland or Disneyworld, but have seen Escape from Tomorrow, which I deem just as good.
But then I saw the movie and realized that maybe the reason why this film was allowed a release and writer/director Randy Moore wasn't sued into oblivion, was because his film is so incoherent, that it essentially poses no threat to Disney's entertainment driven demographic.Synopsis: On a vacation at Disney World with his family, a father becomes fixated on two presumably underage girls, begins to see visions during some of the rides and has a spell put on him by a crazy cougar-witch.Beginning with a disclaimer detailing how this movie was filmed at Disney World without Disney's consent, sadly, with the lack of a coherent story, this gimmick is one of the only things "Escape from Tomorrow" has going for it.
This is a fact which Moore didn't seem to comprehend.While the Lynchian initial 40 minutes did keep my attention (if you're not a fan of David Lynch or don't know who the hell I'm talking about, stop reading now) and the surrealist suggestions of pedophilia and sexual frustration occurring in the confines of "the happiest place on earth" was an intriguing touch, the final half is so off-the-wall bonkers, devouring what little strands of coherent plot this film had to offer, that many will be looking for an escape from their theater.Film geekiness aside, on a purely entertainment level, "Escape from Tomorrow" doesn't work at all.
And I can't help but believe that those who will come to the defense of this film (or give it a positive review) forgive a lot of this shoddy filmmaking, lack of story structure and distractingly bad acting (the scariest part of this horror-esque story) simply because it was filmed at Disney World, without permission.Final Thought: In a roundabout way, the fact that one's love or hatred towards the Disney cooperation has no bearing on one's love or hatred towards this movie, is indicative of a larger reason as to why "Escape from Tomorrow" fails as a project.
"Escape From Tomorrow" is a black & white film that was filmed guerilla style, in part, at Disneyland and Disney World.
During all this, the guy seems to slowly lose his mind and ultimately all sorts of weird, paranoid stuff begins happening at the happiest place on Earth.I think the IDEA of this film is very good.
Seeing a likable schmo lose his mind among the chaos, heat and crowding at Disney is pretty funny--but this film was difficult to love because of the characters (especially but not including dad) and icky story elements.
So, overall, it has an interesting idea and the plot is occasionally interesting- -but it's also fatally flawed and probably would not be appreciated by the casual viewer.By the way, if you are nuts about Disney World, you can tell that much wasn't filmed there and that it must have been filmed and assembled well before 2013, as many of the rides changed well before this release date.
This movie seems like it is a film school project that was produced by the kids that skipped class all the time and regard Eraserhead as a stunning achievement in cinematic history.I can admit that not all things are for everyone but this movie makes me want to hunt down the people that made it and demand my hour and a half back..
So if you've heard about this movie, you've probably already heard that its a marvel of guerrilla film making and that it stirred a lot of controversy with Disney, where the movie is largely shot without the prior permission of Disney.What they don't tell you is that filmmakers have tried to make a David Lynch type film-noir/suspense/thriller/black comedy(?) but unfortunately have fallen significantly short of this lofty goal.The story is extremely basic, the effects are cringeworthy, the main leads' infatuation with 2 underage French teens at Disney is uncomfortable and the complete second half of the movie makes no sense whatsoever.I had heard so much about this movie but it didn't even meet a fraction of the expectations i had from the film.
I was intrigued by the premise of Escape from Tommorow after stumbling across a trailer a few weeks ago, with the notion of horror/paronia flooding a family during a day at Disney World sounding unique.After finishing this painfully boring and uncreative slog of a film, I realized the whole black-and-white and "guerilla-style" film making, being a huge selling point of the film, was entirely a gimmick.
I'm expecting most of this film's slim budget went towards getting Disney Park passes for the cast and crew, because the acting is atrocious (especially with the children and wife) the special effects are entry level After Effects, and the writing is piss poor.
I don't need technicolor or car chases or CGI out the wazoo to enjoy a film.Really what you have here is a story about a depressed man on vacation that is dealing with a little midlife crisis and still trying to please his family before hitting them with the bad news.You get into his head and his delusions and, like all indie films, it relies on a smart script because it, well, that is all it has going for it.There are better movies out there, but Escape from Tomorrow is entertaining for what it is and the resources they had to make it with.
I found out a lot of interesting things of this movie and the fact that they didn't have Disney's permission to film and get away with it, blows my mind how they pulled it off.I enjoyed Escape from Tomorrow, I enjoyed it in a way that it feels like a guilty pleasure for me and overall I think this movie is weird, messed up, but still a well done film from a first time director.
Randy Moore first time film and straight away I want to see him doing other films, because he went for it and it didn't back fire on him.Some people may be put off by the weirdness of the film and it's style and it's laughable moments, which is fine because people can like what their want to like, but what the movie dose so well and I think so people might agree on and that is Randy Moore made DisneyLand look like a place to avoid.Overall I enjoyed watching Escape from Tomorrow and I'm not going to give it the perfect rating, because I don't feel that this movie is "amazing" or "the best movie of century", no but the movie is still worth checking out..
I watched this movie because I worked at Disney World for two years and wanted to see how they were going to pull it off.
You have a grown man who has lost his job, at the end of his tether, blacking out and leaving his kids unattended (horror enough), while encountering strange characters including a cougar like drunk, a whaling nurse, naked women and a kooky scientist to name a few.While the story isn't linear, it's a strange trippy ride especially in the latter half where Jim finds himself under The Epcot Centre in a '2001 Space Oddity' and 'Future World' looking environment.
As a low budget affair what is commendable is that director Moore manages to put a David Lynch style chiller together turning something so ingrained as joyous and familiar into something so unnerving and surreal, while still respecting the real life park and big W (it's not a Disney bashing film persay).
One of the reasons I feel that this film has so often been referred to as "Lynchian" is not only the fact that it is extraordinarily surreal and absurd throughout every last scene, but also b/c, like some of Lynch's work, it contains performances that are so odd and enigmatically out-of-touch that they add so gloriously and richly to the world the man behind the camera is attempting to create, despite being otherwise poor performances that wouldn't at all work in any other type of film (of course, there are many exceptions in Lynch's case; e.g.: Sheryl Lee in 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me', John Hurt in 'The Elephant Man', Isabella Rosselini in 'Blue Velvet', Naomi Watts in 'Mulholland Dr.', and I could go on and on), and the same goes for some of the visuals (I am mostly referring to the visuals in 'Escape from Tomorrow', although it can be argued that Lynch's new season of 'Twin Peaks' also falls under this "category" of sorts).
Shot on location at Disneyland and Disney World, apparently without permission, the movie is worth checking out simply for the unique spin that the filmmakers place on the popular amusement parks.
The super saccharine perpetual happiness of Disney World then starts to morph into bizarre hallucinations and we find implications that there might be something more sinister going on in the "happiest place on Earth".I never thought I'd get to actually see this movie.
If anything, she helps to keep the character of Jim sympathetic.The occasional awkward dialogue and the cartoonish evil wife weren't enough to spoil the movie for me, though, because I love a good mind-bender and ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW qualifies.
I think 70 percent of the film works, I'd say shooting the movie in black and white seemed to help give it a more disturbing theme to it.
Escape from Tomorrow, filmed guerrilla style at the actual Disney resort in Florida, is part marital melodrama, part horror show, and part surreal oddity.
In "Escape From Tomorrow" we see Jim and Emily with their two kids, Sara and Elliot, on vacation at Disney World.
In "Escape From Tomorrow" we see Jim and Emily with their two kids, Sara and Elliot, on vacation at Disney World.
He rejects the advance, whereupon she spits on his face.The man develops a "cat flu" and coughs up fur-balls into the toilets, wherein he dies.Disney "employees" attend to take the body away, and the son of the man is awarded what looked like a "Buzz Lightyear" badge.The room is cleaned and another family arrive to visit the theme park...Movie ends.I can only say watch it if you are perhaps in an altered state of consciousness or, have absolutely nothing else to watch; including the test pattern on the TV..
English is not my mother language so this will probably be my first and last review, made it out of rage for wasting 1:30 hrs of my uninteresting life with this horrid black and -some shades of- white premature abortion of Crossover (an extremely bad movie for those who ask), and i gotta be honest, not a single movie made by The Asylum force my fingers to submit a raging review.This is not a bizarre movie created by some eccentric brainiac that wants you to think, the plot is just a tangled mess filled with holes and never reaching anywhere, so don't feel stupid because you don't understand it, you simple can't understand a bad writing or decipher the director's mind like the wtf-why-is-in-slow-motion water spit from one of the girls, it just don't fit, looks like an attempt of artistic wannabe scene from the beginning of Antichrist without the art or trying to set an emphasis to something that they simply never develop.CGI is definitely not the worst I've seen on a movie but it's unnecessary and evident on several shoots like the playing kids.Acting...
As was stated in the movie, "You can't be happy all the time," definitely played out in "Escape from Tomorrow."  In fact, while in the park, we had glimpses of something evil lurking or having happened in the past.
"Checking in?" "That we are." Opening at Sundance in January 2013, with a reception of mixed reviews afterwards, 'Escape From Tomorrow' is an American fantasy horror film shot in chilling monochrome and shot on location in Walt Disney World and Disneyland...without permission respectively.
I personally have not had my own personal 'Escape' experience when I paid my ticket to see Uncle Walt last summer in California, but I did however smile to myself while waiting in line that I had indeed seen the movie, and the only comparison between the Disney theme parks and that film are this...in that they both exist..
How writer/director Randy Moore went about making "Escape from Tomorrow" is interesting but that's where the good qualities about this production end because the actual movie is a load of stinky, sweaty garbage.But is that a surprise?
It was obvious during the entire time I watched the film that Moore didn't actually care about making a film, he just wanted to create some controversy, some hype and a whole lot of buzz for the film festival circuit.This wasn't a movie, it was a really bad publicity stunt.Hi!
Looking for a means of entertainment isn't supposed to be bad-thing, but this movie acts like it does.
You've heard the stories about this movie: rogue filmmaker stealthily shoots his feature film in Disney World without being caught or somehow sued to death.
I was inspired to go back and screen this after I read about another dark Disney-inspired art piece: Banksy's "Dismaland." I don't live in the UK, so I figured the next best thing would be to experience "Escape from Tomorrow" -- a David Lynchian treatment of "The Happiest Place on Earth" that's sadly more fun to talk about than it is to actually watch.During a family vacation to Disney World, family man Jim is informed that he's being laid off from his job.
Due to its production limitations, I was constantly reminded that I was watching a troupe of guerilla filmmakers putting all their effort into secretly filming a movie at a famous landmark instead of just, you know, MAKING A GOOD MOVIE.I didn't care if Jim made things right with his family, or survived the not-so-hidden horrors that were plaguing him.
While I thoroughly admire the concept – an unauthorized movie filmed within the Disneyland/world Park(s,) I'm still trying to figure out the Black & White.20.
The Movie about Jim White who lost his job and taken his Family to trip to Walt Disney World, he spotted two French girls who suppose keeping eyes on his son, Elliott and daughter, Sara.
Escape From Tomorrow is a movie that feels like they were making the story up as they went.