‘To Escape’ Review: David C. Roberts Fuses Prison, Inception And Poe
On the surface, director and producer David C. Roberts’ newest short film is just a classic - and well, cliched - explanation in regards to escaping prison. The cliched part naturally arrives through the fact that Roberts seems to have a knack for using other film footage to make his most recent productions. Digging into the concrete struts of the prison cell with a small blade, squirming through burrowed tunnels and evading light beams from guard towers - it’s all pleasantly featured within the “short” film window that is To Escape (around fifteen minutes or so).
You would think that something … just doesn’t mesh correctly given the fact that he uses about twenty eight movies in this time frame but everything is joined at the hip so well, that the artistic approach is in fact, widely approachable by the viewer.
Back in December 2025, Roberts released Song of My City, the second in his collage film trilogy. Having watched that and coming to understand its take on the day in the life of a cinematic New York City, To Escape very much evolves the concept of a scenario ripped from a time and place - by dropping it on the cutting room floor and letting it be reconstructed as Roberts sees fit. We’re now not only seeing someone’s nostalgic views of a city from days gone by - but how a time, a place, feelings, struggles and a sense of survival come from this one man as well.
To say that To Escape is an epic narrative is an understatement. Even though the short film consists of many different scenes from many different movies, you can clearly see that this is the story of a single man thrown in jail and fighting for a way out. It does have remnants of Song of My City - the passage of time is clearly present through this collage cinematic style, but there is something different here as well. This story of survival is only exemplified by Robert’s usage of Philip Glass’ A Descent Into The Maelstrom. Roberts has made use of Glass before in both shorts (both in High Noon and Song of My City) but there’s a great combination at play here that everybody should get lost in - if only for a moment.
One part is obviously just hitting the right, long drawn out notes at the correct time. The other is a much deeper, much more lore-based aspect of To Escape that shouldn’t be ignored. Glass’ Descent is based off of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name. Poe’s creation of one man’s fight against a giant ocean whirlpool in that story (and the music that Glass made off of it) emphasizes everything seen in To Escape tenfold.
I imagine if the overall film was longer, the joining of music and movie wouldn’t hold such a strong effect throughout but the “short” film genre that Roberts likes so much really doesn’t leave time for filler. I’m not saying that as if it's any sort of weakness though. Through the precise and minimal runtime, To Escape conveys that survival waits for no man - in more ways than one.
Before I bring this review to a close, I mentioned in the preceding paragraphs that there are scenes depicting the main character (or characters, depending on how you look at it) sawing their way out of jail - with a blade that is smaller than one’s hand. Compared to everything else in To Escape (besides the conclusion), this ultimately brings across Roberts’ real life ongoing fight with incurable blood cancer. Through the hardships of this man going through the many scenarios in jail (back breaking labor, treated like animals, starving for food, falling into line by being beaten), the director shows the mental and physical struggle that a patient with a life altering disease has to go through too.
It may not be the same thing explicitly, but doing what it takes in order to survive is a path we all walk down at some point. Roberts’ definitely captured the right moments of these twenty eight movies and didn’t have a problem putting all these various puzzle pieces together either. In the best of ways, the ending is the most exciting but also haunting part to the whole thing.
I will give To Escape a 5 out of 5.
Starting from September 11th, David C. Roberts’ To Escape will start an Oscar-qualifying run at Laemmle’s Royal in Los Angeles, California.
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