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This comedy-drama starts with a neat idea: Dave, a 30-year-old slacker (Nick Thune), builds a whimsical cardboard fort in his apartment. Inside the fort, however, lies a seemingly endless labyrinth which traps him, his girlfriend, and numerous other acquaintances. There are plenty of inventive visuals on display, but writer/director Bill Watterson - no relation to the "Calvin and Hobbes" cartoonist - and cowriter Steven Sears don't know where to take them.

The film's MVPs are production designers Trisha Gum and John Sumner and art director Jeff White. What they and their team have accomplished, with what was surely a minuscule budget, is spectacular. Room after cardboard room, the sets amaze and delight. But Watterson's staging is uninspired and Jon Boal's cinematography looks cheap. Mostly, however, the script is to blame: the kernel of a good story is lost, like its characters, in a cardboard maze of unfunny gags and the occasional bit of psychobabble. (There's some symbolic blarney about how the maze represents Dave's creative inertia or something.) James Urbaniak, the poor man's Kyle MacLachlan, is always a welcome presence, though his meddling documentarian character grows tiresome. (Blame the script, not the actor.) Adam Busch is likewise game, but the weak material drags him down. The rest of the cast is unremarkable.

I genuinely dislike criticizing a film that was clearly a labor of love for its creators, but Dave Made a Maze was so frustrating that I had to come here to lament its wasted potential. Bravo to the art department, though.

In the mid-90's, there was this weird trend where 80's New York art stars were all given the chance to direct feature films. The less-than-impressive results: Robert Longo's "Johnny Mnemonic," David Salle's "Search and Destroy," Julian Schnabel's "Basquiat" and finally Cindy Sherman's "Office Killer." That only Schnabel moved on to direct a second feature says a lot about these poor directorial choices. Surprise - just because you can paint a picture or take a photograph doesn't mean you know how to make a movie.

That said, "Office Killer" has a unique look to it: Sherman's photographic eye makes for some nice creepy compositions, even if her philosophy about using a camera cinematically is of the bolt-it-to-the-ground-and-maybe-pan-a-little school. And she works well with cinematographer Russell Fine, though the whole film is shot through a murky lens that had this viewer crying out for the occasional bright exterior just to add a little contrast.

So what went wrong with "Office Killer"? Well, pretty much what you'd predict would go wrong with a photographer director who had never made a film before: uneven pacing; more attention paid to the setup of a shot than to what's going on in it; a lack of tension; and a cast who, with the exception of the ever-willing Carol Kane, don't seem to know what to do. Aware that they're working for a famous photographer, they quietly obey, even while Sherman clearly has little experience in working with actors. Michael Imperioli and Jeanne Tripplehorn have been far better elsewhere, Barbara Sukowa is flat-out bad, and Molly Ringwald is her usual depthless self. The script is also somewhat leaden, given its dark comic potential.

"Office Killer" is still a curiosity, interesting mainly for aficionados of Cindy Sherman's work (and you've got to admire those cool opening credits), though horror fans who enjoyed the better-received "May" (which I personally didn't care for) might like this movie's look and mood. As for me, I couldn't shake off the feeling that this is the product of a bunch of chuckling New York hipsters who thought they were doing something "postmodern" and "ironic" but only churned out something uninspired and limp... albeit artsy.