Directed by: Bill Watterson, Starring: Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Nick Thune,
Adam Busch, James Urbaniak. Comedy Horror, US 2017, 81mins, Cert 15.Charlie Kaufman meets Jim Henson courtesy of Doctor Who (except it would
be churlish to complain about the cardboard sets) in director/co-producer Bill
Watterson’s indie debut feature.
Returning from an out of town trip, Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) opens
the apartment door to find that her frustrated artist boyfriend Dave (Nick
Thune) has constructed a cardboard fort in their living room – and he’s trapped
inside it. Boasting TARDIS-like dimensions, the fort contains an extensive
labyrinth maze of corridors laden with cardboard booby traps and a Minotaur.
Annie, together with Dave’s best buddy, gamer nerd Gordon (Adam Busch), and a
disparate collection of characters including a reality-TV film crew and a
couple of Flemish tourists, ignore Dave’s warnings and enter the maze in a
quest to rescue the architect.
This quirky art house film fest favourite is an a(MAZE)ing feat of
production design ingenuity. And whilst it’s largely populated with paper-thin characters
delivering lines which occasionally fall flat(packed)(sorry), there’s still
much to admire in the visual rendering of Dave’s cardboard prison. Employing a
variety of old-school non-CGI techniques such as stop-motion, puppetry and
in-camera forced perspective trickery, Dave’s maze boasts an impressive array
of threats and creative conceits. Stop-motion origami creatures flutter around
Dave and his ragtag band of liberators, whilst RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK-like
traps are triggered by giggling anthropomorphic tripwires. (The resulting
carnage is amusingly conveyed by red lace and silly squirty string). Whilst
sliding down a drain pipe to avoid pursuit by the Minotaur, Dave’s party are
briefly transformed into hand puppets before having to duck and cover to avoid
paper blow darts.
Dave (Nick Thune) delivers a couple of half-hearted attempts to
rationalise what’s really going on here (a desire to actually complete
something for once?) but frankly neither this nor Watterson and co-writer
Steven Sears seem overly concerned to fully explain, if indeed they actually
know themselves, and it’s left up to individual viewer interpretation to
assemble anything remotely solid.
Meera Rohit Kumbhani displays an unfathomable degree of patience as
Dave’s long-suffering girlfriend Annie, whilst Adam Busch’s geeky Gordon gets
to wear a t-shirt boasting an increasingly less pixelated version of himself on
the chest as he completes each level of challenge in the labyrinth. (So at
least someone gets a character arc). I did admire James Urbaniak’s unblinkingly
focused mercenary TV director Harry, grinding out interviews and character
reactions whilst seemingly oblivious to the surrealist paper and card nightmare
enfolding around him.
Ultimately, DAVE MADE A MAZE is a film which can be enjoyed with a wry
appreciative smile. The odd laugh out loud moment pokes through the holes in
the script, and the level of artistry and detail in the construction of the sets
could offer repeat viewings a degree of reward making this cardboard fantasy
worth recycling.
***(OUT OF 5*)
Paul Worts
This review was first published by Frightfest.
