Mazes (Útvesztök) (2008) Movie Short Review

Mazes (Útvesztök) (2008) IMDB YouTube

MAZES (ÚTVESZTÖK) (2008) movie poster

If there is one kind of video that I always watch it is a hand-drawn animation. Get me on YouTube and give me a Bill Plympton video and I am happy. That is what this short film makes me feel like. It is a quick 8 minute short film by Hungarian artist István Orosz. One of his many artistic jobs in his career was as a poster designer and yet I could not find a movie poster for this short, so I made my own using the video. Útvesztök is Hungarian for maze.

On to the actual short. It is a series of 9 sections, each that starts with a maze, starting with the Ninth maze. You see a maze that is then solved using an on screen pencil - and the solve is always the number of the maze. Next you get a series of animated scenes; then maze 8, with the maze solved on screen, etc. It is fun to watch the animations and see what is going to be shown next. And the mazes look wonderful.

Fun to watch ! 6.5 / 10

You can watch the entire short film below !

Meander (2020) Movie Review

Meander (2020) IMDB Prime

Meander movie poster

Meander is a French sci-fi film from 2020 directed by Mathieu Turi. The film starts with a woman laying in the road who needs to move out of the way of an oncoming car. The woman ends up accepting a ride in the car with a man and they begin a conversation. Things go south (no spoiler) and the woman ends up passing out. She wakes in a strange, small room with a device attached to her wrist and dressed in techy full body suit.

The majority of the movie becomes a series of obstacles that she must overcome to escape the maze of tunnels she is stuck in. Walls are moving, countdowns are happening, water is flooding, tunnels are heating up, etc. It is a 1 person version of The Cube but in happening tunnels. Add in a strange creature (possibly an alien?), and some flashbacks of her life and we get a science fiction movie.

Through trial and error we get a woman trying to solve the maze, using clues others have left for her to find the exit. Does she?

Interesting movie, but a but too weird for me. 4.8 / 10

Check out the trailer below.

The Night House (2020) Movie Review

The Night House (2020) IMDB Prime

The Night House movie poster

A woman has recently lost her husband to an unexpected death. Since we find out how 15 minutes in I feel like I do not need to say spoiler, but if you want to skip to the next paragraph do that now. It was a suicide that he did using a gun, and that is how the story picks-up, post death.

The wife, our main character is in shock about this and as she is dealing with the loss she finds a book among his things with architectural sketches of their house, which happens to also include sketches of a variety of mazes, including one that looks like a 3D level of a house:

The Night House maze scene

Then some weird things start happening, like some odd dreams and visions. And also we get a woman who is searching for answers to what happened among the things he left behind. This includes a book called Caerdroia that features a labyrinth on the cover. And the wife officially starts her own investigation into her husbands death as is common in the movies, but never happens in real life.

The Night House maze scene - Caerdroia Labyrinth book

Things get weirder from here. And at some point you will wonder what is going on. But you will like it. 7.2/10.

Check out the trailer below.

Cube Zero (2004) Movie Review

Cube Zero (2004) IMDB Prime

Cube Zero movie poster

I have previously reviewed the movie Cube which I enjoyed. The Cube concept is interesting and it starts out with a group of people waking up and don’t know where or why they are where they are. They end up being in an intersecting maze of cube rooms, each with it’s own particular booby trap that can kill them. Their goal is to survive and escape. This movie, Cube Zero, is the third in the trilogy.

The second movie in the trilogy is not reviewed on this site so I will do it now as a public service message.

Cube 2 : Hypercube (2002) IMDB Prime

Cube 2 Hypercube movie poster

It is terrible. Avoid. 3.6/10.

Okay now that I wasted our time on that back to our main movie, Cube Zero. What I like about this movie is that as they tell the story we learn the who and the why of people coming to be in the Cube. We also have a storyline that looks at the perspective of the workers who are managing the maze on a day to day basis. We get insight of what they think about the situation and how the Cube is monitoring the participants. They speak about the morals of what they are doing, which eventually leads to one of the workers entering the Cube to help save a person they think is there incorrectly.

If you found yourself watching the original movie and having a lot of questions, many of them are answered in this movie, but you’ll need to watch it yourself so this can be a spoiler free review.

I was entertained. I give it a 6.0/10.

Check out the trailer below.

Oh, Hi there. This movie has been out awhile, and that means you can usually find it streaming for free, like on YouTube, available through this link.

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Reviews of over 80 Maze and labyrinth movies

How to make over 40 different mazes

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