The Maus is one these films in which the location serves to create a meaningful part of the overall discomforting mood. As always, it comes with all sorts of supporting (or unsupportive from the protagonists' perspective) features, such as no cellular reception and a language barrier. While I'm not a fan of using these particular defining aspects, I must admit that including the female protagonist's obvious (and completely understandable) PTSD after surviving the Serbian cleansing of Bosnian Muslims added a lot of character and quality to the story.
The plot is quite simple to understand from the film's description (and from watching the first ten minutes). Selma (Alma Terzic) and her boyfriend Alex (August Wittgenstein) visit Bosnia and become stranded and lost in one of its vast forests, which happens to be riddled with unmarked mine fields. By chance they happen to meet two "local" Serbs, Vuk (Aleksandar Seksan) and Milos (Sanin Milavic), who offer to assist them. From that point - reality and paranoia become mixed and intertwined as Selma initially distrusts the two on account of their origin, seeing in them the same type of people who murdered her family during the war.
The acting is quite impressive (especially by Seksan and Milavic whose performance keeps the audience guessing as to their true intentions and nature and Selma's sanity) and the story progresses in a very compelling way. Each and every scene seems to have been meticulously chosen to serve the film's conclusion and final plot twist (which isn't brilliant but definitely serves as a fine and terrible closure). While in no way "fun" to watch - The Maus is pretty rewarding for Horror fans who enjoy being depressed by human nature and what we can at times bring ourselves to do to our fellow man.
All in all, The Maus is far from being a masterpiece and none of its features are delivered in an overly impressive manner. It's simple enough and does a pretty decent job in toying with the audience's thoughts and emotions (which I assume was the creators' initial goal). Nothing fancy, yet quite rewarding by its own right. I don't think it deserves the low rating and all the harsh criticism it has received here (now there's a surprise), but you could still find something better (or a lot worse) to watch.
