THE MAZE

 2010/15/87m

“This is no field of dreams.”

Director: Stephen Shimek / Writers: Katy Baldwin & Timothy Gutierrez / Cast: Shalaina Fotheringham, Luke Drake, Brendon Sean Pearson, Clare Niederpruem, Kyle Paul, Tye Nelson, Marty Steinberg, Richard Dutcher, Allan Groves.

Body Count: 6

Five teenage friends – the usual distribution of two girls, three boys – trespass into a Utah farm corn maze after hours for a game of tag. Unfortunately for them, a loon wearing a red hoodie has murdered a guy therein and doesn’t take kindly to the intrusion.

This passable effort goes through the motions for the first fifty minutes until it decides on quite a unique change of direction, once the sole survivor escapes and is taken to the local cop shop. The killer follows and the film then toys with our expectations somewhat, regurgitating an interesting revelation.

Unfortunately, one original twist does not a great movie make and the rest of The Maze is an elongated affair that would nicely as a short in an anthology film but barely has enough going on to entertain for the truncated stalk n’ slash section. The killer isn’t particularly an imposing figure to behold and brandishes a far smaller blade than the one which adorns the DVD cover and very few of his lethal slashes make it to camera.

The Maze is good looking enough production wise, but too reliant on cliches to make the slasher bit of it particularly enjoyable and doesn’t do enough with its twist to leave an impression and there are (strangely) numerous other cornfed slasher movies better than this one.