Portrait of an artist unraveling in horror comedy 'Dave Made a Maze'

By Michael Rechtshaffen

Aug. 17, 2017 10:42 AM PT

While the dramatic underpinnings could have used more work, the labyrinth that’s the focus of “Dave Made a Maze” is truly an amazingly inventive sight to behold.

Determined to finally complete something of significance, frustrated artist Dave (Nick Thune) pours every ounce of his creative juices into a ramshackle cardboard box fort he has constructed in the middle of his living room floor, only to become trapped inside.

It may not look like much on the outside, but as his girlfriend, Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani), and a ragtag search party soon discover, the inside has taken on a life of its own.

Informed by the darker reaches of Dave’s imagination, the interior is a demented funhouse of corrugated cardboard booby traps, attacking giant origami birds and even a life-size Minotaur contributing to a growing body count.

In his feature directorial debut, actor Bill Watterson, clearly going for an edgier comic take on ’80s fantasy films like “Legend” and “Labyrinth,” has production designers John Sumner and Trisha Gum and art director Jeff White to thank for those wildly imaginative set pieces enhanced with old school stop-motion photography and puppetry.

Had the glib, underdeveloped characters and circuitous plotting been afforded that same attention to detail, the film itself might not have felt so inescapably boxed in by its own design.

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