After numerous name changes, this grizzled flick gets a release.
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| "I'm just standing here struggling to come up with ANOTHER name for this thing." |
A misbegotten stillborn that’s more of a mess than a
movie, Red Machine i.e. Endangered before
Grizzly and finally Into the Grizzly Maze wastes the actors’
and viewer’s time with a grizzly bear chase/attack in the woods thriller that’s
positively dead on arrival. Sporting a
litany of A-list cast members unlucky enough appear in the same shot with some
of the worst CGI effects this side of Sharknado,
Into the Grizzly Maze is a poor man’s
The Edge that pretty much eats
everyone alive who sets foot within miles of it. Heavily yet lazily lifting from its far
better counterparts such as Jaws and The Descent, this movie changes as many
movies it rips off as it did hands in distribution. Completed in 2013, the film was picked up by
Open Road Films in 2014 before being dropped and finally garnering a theatrical
release through Vertical Entertainment in 2015.
That it got this far is either a miracle or admission of defeat. Whatever the case, the one thing it certainly
is not is a good movie.
Jumpy and often incoherent, nothing much happens in Into the Grizzly Maze save for some
scattershot bear attacks and small town American Hicktasia. As previously mentioned, the wasted cast is
overqualified and underutilized. James
Mardsen and Thomas Jane are mostly themselves with Jane’s local cop character
receding into the clichéd hero seen in The
Mist. Scott Glenn, God bless him, is
his usual dependable character actor self, playing a middleweight supporting
character of little consequence or interest.
Only Billy Bob Thornton emerges intact, exuding his surreal brand of
snark for high camp, almost commenting on the absurdity of being caught in such
a ridiculous film project. The opening credits boast the use of the trained
animal Bart the Bear, better known as the Bald-Headed Bear from The Great Outdoors. You would expect with that air of animal
expertise involved in the film that you would see impressive scenery with human
actors and a bear in the same shot.
Instead, we get photo-shopped images of piss poor green screen and CG
enhancement that actually elevates the usual Asylum Entertainment schlock to a somewhat watchable level.
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| "Why you gotta CGI me, bro?" |
Reportedly Into
the Grizzly Maze cost around $10 million to produce. Watching the finished product you really have
to wonder where it went. Certainly not
towards the locations, which range between actual helicopter photography and
poorly rendered CGI. If it did go to the
cast, can you blame them? I had to
suffer through the banality and tedium of this thing. Well imagine having to spend months of your
life working on making this thing into a movie that will only serve to
embarrass yourself and drain your wallet dry of any cash. Pretty clearly Billy Bob took the money and
ran like Hell, as any sane person associated with this project should do.
If you’re looking for a good survival in the
wild thriller with plenty of grizzly bear perils afoot, you’re better off with The Edge or even Grizzly Man for the dust Timothy Treadwell manages to kick up in
the wind. Don’t let the title of this
one fool you into thinking its chock full of suspenseful thrills. Into
the Grizzly Maze doesn’t do much more than lay around like a dead
animal.
-Andrew Kotwicki