Meander - Survival Instinct

To me this film was, to just quite plain and simply put it, " an absolute Meandering heap of junk"! It uneqivocally had no clear purpose or direction. Its an agonizing 1h:30m:46s of dreary nothing that you, at first, try to work out what the plot is so that you have some idea of a story; you soon give that up though as you quickly realize that you have become the meandering emptiness.

Someone said that it was a film that had you weaving through a discovery of different emotions...What the heck! Thats just arty-farty, complete and utter pompous clap trap! There is nothing hidden in this film, there is nothing emotive in this and there most definitely is no point in this. For a film to work it doesn't necessarily need a middle but, it absolutely must have a start and a definitive end; be it a closed end finàle or an open ended road to a possible sequel.

Unfortunately we have reached one of those fad time periods again in film-land...the escape thrillers! We had "Escape Room" (2018) and its sequel 2: Tournament of Champions, and a few more not so memorable also rans...just add this one to the latter description.

Un score nul de ma part mesdames et messieurs!

A zero score from me ladies and gentlemen!

Lisa (Gaia Weiss) is alone in the middle of nowhere. A vehicle stops. She reluctantly gets a ride from the creepy stranger. She gets knocked out and wakes up in a futuristic tunnel maze.

This really does meander. The basic premise is very Cube-esque with less people. Quite frankly, she's alone most of the time. The maze does not engender any mystery like the room numbers in Cube. It becomes a series of limited thrills as she crawl around and around. There are a few interesting ideas but the main story has no juice. It's really just watching this lady crawl around in the tunnels for an hour. Fast forward is very useful in this one.

The premise for this film is simple: A woman is kidnapped by a serial killer and left in a deadly obstacle course...which she must navigate her way through before time runs out.

If she fails...she dies.

The whole thing is barely large enough to crawl through and is filled with puzzles and booby traps.

On her wrist is a light with a timer on it.

It gives her 11 minutes to complete each section.

As you might expect...most of the film is just the actress crawling around what looks like a system of vents.

She's not the only one crawling around in there, however.

As, at times, she is pit against other survivors...whom she must fight in order to survive.

Apparently, the whole system is designed to be failed.

Because you need to fail at least once- after which you are sent back to the beginning, to start again- before you can progress to the end.

It's all very reminiscent of Vincenzo Natali's Cube series.

But this one is clearly meant to be read as a challenge where you face your inner demons- even the devil himself- and win.

Only this isn't a game...it's the spiritual quest of the afterlife.

To free oneself from the cycle of rebirth into the realm of suffering.

To achieve absolute liberation.

Nirvana.

Thus...in the end...it's safe to say she died on the road that day.

But she is still forever, eternal.

A nice little film, with lots of tension inducing moments.

It's no Enter The Void...but it's running off very similar themes.

6.5 out of 10.

Crawl and crawl and crawl

A new French sci-fi mystery where a woman is caught in a series of tunnel with multiple traps.

The movie started out slow, and this really requires some patience before things started to pick up. Honestly, the traps were not too scary like in similar movies. Then, when the twist started, it wasn't too surprising because this was done countless times before. The development of the main character was again, pretty typical, and was supposed to tie to the story. However, it really didn't make a lot of sense and felt cheesy.

There were still things that worked in the movie. Even though the progression was slow, there were still intense scenes that kept me on the edge. The clean camera work and some gores elevated the horror aspect and helped with the scenes.

Overall, it's a mystery that is done better before. 5.5/10.

This film reminds me far more of the current 'Escape Room' type films, than 'Cube', other than it is a single person, and not a group.

Since there is little dialog, it may be the type of film to watch on a second monitor of your computer system while you work on something else.

Curious, since the song and dialog at the beginning are in English in the version I saw (DVD title Meander, Gravitas Ventures release) but the ending dialog was in French with English subtitles.