DAVE MADE A MAZE (2017)

Studio:       Gravitas Ventures
Director:    Bill Watterson
Writer:       Steven Sears, Bill Watterson
Producer:  John Charles Meyer, John Chuldenko
Stars:     Nick Thune, Meera Rohit Kumbhani, James Urbaniak, Stephanie Allyne, Kirsten Vangsness, Scott Krinsky, Frank Caeti, Rick Overton, Adam Busch

Review Score:

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Summary:

A group of friends becomes lost in an impossibly large labyrinth when one of them builds a cardboard maze in his living room.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Annie returns home from a trip to find her apartment’s living room overtaken by an intricate makeshift fort. From beneath the boxes, Annie’s boyfriend Dave explains that he built a cardboard labyrinth as a project for himself while she was gone. However, the labyrinth was built so big that Dave became lost, and he has been stuck inside it for three days.

Dave further explains that the labyrinth is much bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside. He goes on to warn Annie that no one should enter the maze because he built booby traps and it is easy to get lost.

Disbelieving Dave’s wild claims, Annie asks why he doesn’t just dismantle the boxes and come out. Dave counters that he doesn’t want to destroy his hard work. Dave asks Annie to call his friend Gordon for help.

After seeing Dave’s predicament, Gordon calls their filmmaking friend Harry, who brings a cameraman and boom operator to record a documentary about Dave and the labyrinth. Gordon also invites their friends Leonard, Jane, Greg and Brynn, as well as two Flemish tourists and a hobo into Annie’s apartment. Leonard leaves after Harry interviews him for the documentary.

Thinking the whole ordeal is stupid, Annie prepares to go inside the maze and pull out Dave. Everyone except the hobo insists on going into the maze too.

Annie and the others are shocked to see that Dave was telling the truth when they step inside the large labyrinth. Gordon cuts himself and his blood is absorbed by the cardboard floor.

Annie, Gordon, Harry, and Harry’s two-man crew go through a series of imaginative hallways before coming to a trash room. Anthropomorphic origami birds attack their group. Everyone escapes the room through the mouth of a giant totem.

Leonard returns to the apartment and enters the maze.

Harry pauses to interview Annie for his documentary. Jane interrupts. When Jane accidentally triggers a booby trap, a blade decapitates her. Jane’s blood sprays everyone in the form of red yarn.

Brynn joins the group after Greg is similarly killed by another trap. Unable to find Greg’s body afterward, Gordon deduces that a Minotaur is taking the labyrinth’s victims.

Annie takes a box cutter to the walls with the intention of cutting their way out of the maze. Annie, Gordon, Harry, the cameraman, and the boom operator escape while the Minotaur attacks Brynn.

Dave finds the five of them. He directs everyone to slide into a pipe. When they emerge on the other side, everyone is transformed into paper bag puppets. The Minotaur chases Dave’s group back into the maze where they resume human form. Dave misdirects the Minotaur by erecting a towel as a temporary wall.

Dave tells everyone that the maze is dangerously unstable because it is incomplete. Instead of defeating the maze, Dave wants to work together to finish its construction, believing that will solve their problems. Annie tells Dave that he merely wishes to avoid having to destroy it.

The group comes to a part of the maze that Dave doesn’t recognize. Dave apologizes to Annie for bringing the labyrinth into their apartment as he speculates that the maze is now running itself based on his imagination.

After a detour to a film projection room, all of the men become entranced by a pulsing paper vagina built into one of the walls. Dave warns that it is a trap. He then shows everyone his cardboard hand, which was transformed when he tried reaching into the mesmerizing vagina.

Dave, Annie, Gordon, Harry, and the film crew make it out of the maze, but discover that the apartment is now transformed into a cardboard construct. Dave again contends that if they finish building the maze, everything will be fine.

Harry interviews Dave for the documentary. Dave admits that he only set out to accomplish something on his own and is sorry about the people who died.

Gordon and the boom operator stop the Minotaur from entering the apartment by erecting a towel wall over the maze entrance.

The group proposes killing the maze by finding its heart and destroying it. Dave points out that he didn’t build a heart into the maze because he didn’t want anyone to be able to exploit a weak spot. Annie tells Dave he needs to get over his fear of failure by building a chrysalis that they can destroy to save everyone.

The group returns to the maze where they encounter a cardboard puppet incarnation of Brynn, who continually asks for a high five. While Dave and Annie look for a place where they can cut to the center of the maze and construct a chrysalis, Gordon and Harry’s crew stay behind to interview Brynn.

Dave and Annie flashback to a looping conversation whose tone changes with each incarnation as the couple also repeatedly changes costumes.

Dave and Annie construct a cardboard chrysalis. Dave gives Annie a sword that she uses to cut a path to the maze’s center.

Gordon and Harry lasso Brynn, who transforms into a giant clawed hand. Caught by the rope, the cameraman is pulled into a pit by the hand and killed.

Harry and the boom operator rejoin Dave and Annie while Gordon distracts the Minotaur. Dave and Annie put the chrysalis in position. It turns into an animated zoetrope as it spins.

Gordon inadvertently activates a trap that kills Leonard.

Dave takes the sword and slices the chrysalis. The maze falls down on the Minotaur as well as everyone left inside.

Dave pulls himself out from under piles of cardboard to find himself back in reality. Annie, Harry, Gordon, and the boom operator also emerge. After everyone cleans up the mess, Harry mentions to Gordon that he will need to notify the families of everyone who died there today.

Together, Dave and Annie take the cardboard scraps out to the dumpster. They return to their apartment holding hands. Meanwhile, the Minotaur emerges from the cardboard at the dumpster and begins stalking down the street.

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Review:

Annie just returned from a trip to find her living room overtaken by a cardboard fort seemingly constructed by an enterprising 12-year-old.  The architect is actually her adult boyfriend Dave, someone who struggles with never finishing anything he sets out to do.  From beneath the duct-taped assembly of delivery boxes, Dave welcomes Annie home with a proclamation that he is lost inside his own creation and with a warning that no one else should enter.

Annie’s exasperated expression says she is used to childish nonsense from Dave.  With a roll of her eyes, she is ready to topple over the tiny towers and slap Dave for his stupidity.

Like Dr. Who’s TARDIS, Dave assures Annie his labyrinth is much bigger on the inside than it appears on the outside.  What’s more, he insists it must not be destroyed.  Dave’s maze is close to completion.  He simply can’t stand to see one more project fall by the wayside, even if it has taken on a mind of its own.

Instead, Dave asks Annie to summon his friend Gordon for help.  Gordon can barely believe his incredulous eyes.  So naturally he invites his filmmaking friend Harry, a few other pals, even two Flemish tourists and a hobo found on the street to take a gander at Dave’s unusual predicament.

Annie has seen enough.  With a box cutter in hand, she is going inside to pull Dave out and stop entertaining his insanity.  Acting as a reluctant Pied Piper, Annie leads a trail of misfits into the maze only to find that Dave wasn’t kidding at all.  Somehow he built an enormously intricate labyrinth out of craft paper and imagination, and now everyone is trapped inside of it.  To escape, they’ll have to face booby traps, attacking origami birds, and Dave’s fear of failure in hulking Minotaur form.

Imagine Charlie Kaufman being tuned closer to whimsically weird than darkly dour and you can picture the kind of mind conjuring “Dave Made a Maze.”  Co-writer/director Bill Watterson, not the cartoonist creator of “Calvin and Hobbes” yet just as comically sharp, taps into those same wells of human despair and optimistic hilarity for a uniquely creative expression of personal frustration visualized as endearing entertainment.  Literally by way of its production, and figuratively in terms of its title character, “Dave Made a Maze” shows how far an artist can take ambition using imagination.

Watterson’s world is mildly wild as a place where the impossible is obviously possible.  Yet he keeps his story from floating too far away with its fantasy through quirkily relatable characters who are amiable and amusing.

Most of “Dave Made a Maze” is populated by schlubby jeans and t-shirt types with hipster hairstyles or other accoutrements of mumblecore thirtysomethings.  Were this an outright genre horror film, Dave would have been played by Chase Williamson.  Nick Thune is still precisely on point as a likable loser just trying to get out of his own way.  Meera Rohit Kumbhani meets Thune’s average Everyman embodiment by mixing sympathetic sighing with “oh, for Pete’s sake” resiliency to personify a put-upon girlfriend perpetually putting up with Dave’s problems.

As armchair documentarian Harry, James Urbaniak nearly runs away with the movie without even trying.  His natural presence slides slyly into the movie’s muted moods of subversive satire and adult adventure.  Urbaniak’s understated attitude is the barometer by which “Dave Made a Maze” often calibrates its blended tones of dry humor and wry commentary.

The tandem team of Trisha Gum and John Sumner then takes the collective vision to an entirely new plane by making “Dave Made a Maze” an absolute triumph of indie filmmaking production design.  Even when crafted from cardboard, sets never seem simple, and certainly never look cheap.  Papier-mâché tiki totems, odd traps built from Dixie cups, and silly string standing in for blood sprays are some of the innovative ways “Dave Made a Maze” makes the most out of an FX budget putting a lot of cash into confetti, paper clips, and colored yarn.

There seems to be some sort of moral to the movie’s story about not being afraid to put yourself out there and risk destruction, otherwise you’ll never accomplish anything at all.  Though the fact that I used “seems” in that sentence tells me I might not fully grasp whatever deeper tale “Dave Made a Maze” has to tell.

Truthfully, it doesn’t matter whether any intended messages make it to you or not.  “Dave Made a Maze” is so imaginative, intelligent, inventive, even inspirational that it is certain to put a smirk on your face, if not a brightly beaming ear-to-ear grin.  Whichever expression you wear, be ready for it to last from the first five minutes until well after end credits conclude.

Review Score:  80

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