“Did she die, or did she just turn into a craft project?”

Justin’s rating: The hobo going for the snacks instead of the maze is the smartest thing I’ve seen all day

Justin’s review: Do you ever look at your life and feel as though you’ve never done anything of great significance? Do you wish that you had an accomplishment that brought you pride and satisfaction and purpose? If so, then you might sympathize with Dave, a young adult who hasn’t made anything of himself.

That is… until one day… 30-year-old slacker Dave (Nick Thune) made a maze.

He made a cardboard maze in his living room. But this isn’t just any ordinary maze; it’s a maze in which you can enter, get lost, and even be killed. It’s a deadly place, but also a place of great wonders, even if it looks like a giant cardboard fort.

At the start, Dave’s girlfriend Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) returns from a weekend trip to see a weird cardboard contraption (with steam vents!) in her living room and Dave’s voice coming out of it. She thinks he’s merely playing in there — until Dave says that he’s lost, that she shouldn’t enter, and that people can’t tear it down. That’s because the maze is much bigger on the inside (like the TARDIS), and it’s eager to swallow up Dave’s friends.

As the spectacle of his maze grows, people decide to delve into this strange world that Dave constructed. Once we get into the maze, we see it’s not imaginary — it’s imagination in motion.

An entire paragraph must be spent on the maze itself, because it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. The use of cardboard to construct these entire rooms is perfect — it’s the construction material of childhood, innocent in nature but eerie when it’s blown up in size to become a monstrous labyrinth. There are cool discoveries, like the house of cards room, or the music room, or the garbage pit room, making this place an art student’s dream. I mean, it looks absolutely awesome, and I’d love to spend a weekend exploring this thing if it wasn’t for all of the death traps.

Because, yeah, this place isn’t safe, and all of these people plunging into it aren’t doing so with all of the information at hand. Dave’s maze is a bit like the Cube from Cube, where some rooms are totally fine and some will chop off your head or unleash a minotaur (of course there’s a minotaur) without hesitation.

As Annie, Dave’s best friend Gordon, the documentary crew, and a whole bunch of others explore the maze, they experience both mounting wonder and dread the further they explore. Every room is amazing. Every room is horrible. And I couldn’t wait to see what lay in the next one.

The absolutely ridiculous concept of this movie is allowed only because it is centered on a nearly universal desire for meaning and purpose. It’s a fantasy film, a horror one too, and also a weird comedy. Dave’s a guy who’s never finished anything in his life, but now he’s absolutely driven to complete this maze to prove something to himself and others. To do so, he’s got to rescue his rescuers using his strange knowledge of fort-building and maze-running.

Oh, and did I mention that Dave Made a Maze was directed and written by Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame? Once you latch on to that fact, you can see how this is essentially one of Calvin’s comic strip adventures come to life.

I cannot express how delighted I was to go through this movie. It’s silly, weird, and endlessly creative. Does it make any sort of logical sense? Not really, and Dave Made a Maze knows it, because it doesn’t really attempt to explain why this place took on a life of its own. It’s probably a metaphor or something, but I’d rather marvel… laugh… and be happy that I’m not in the maze.

Intermission!

• The crew used 30,000 square feet of cardboard donated from two companies’ recycling bins — and returned it all when they were done. They only had two sets at any given time, so as the cast and crew were filming in one, the rest of the crew was busy deconstructing and building the next set.
• “I built something because I wanted to build something.”
• Cartoon intro! I love it!
• “I said the beard’s on the face.”
• “I’ve got to work tomorrow.” “You’ve got awesome right now.”
• Flemish tourists and a hobo from the street
• “Put a montage over this and it’ll be awesome.”
• Don’t push the button Gordon!
• “When did Dave begin to bring inanimate objects to life?”
• Cardboard cockroaches
• “Is this my good yarn?”
• The cardboard tube spike trap
• “I’m shaking you because I’m brimming with emotion!”
• “Hey, follow me.” [runs right into a dead end]
• The forced perspective room
• [everyone’s become cardboard puppets] “I suppose this was only a matter of time.”
• “Safe? We’re not even people.”
• “They say if it was easy everyone would do it.” “That does not apply to this situation in any way whatsoever!”
• The tiny minotaur with its tiny scream
• “Well I guess it’s time to take out the recyclinggggggg”
• High-fives for rhymes
• The lounge room
• The vagina room trap
• “Is there anything in this maze you haven’t stuck your hand in?”
• The cave room
• “Did you build a maze inside the maze?”
• Do NOT high-five the carboard Brinn