Throw in a few additional scenes of unnecessary
objectification of women with cheaper CGI bear attacks and this is exactly the
type of low budget fare you might expect to find on the same shelf as many
Asylum productions or Syfy Channel releases. The screenplay lacks any originality
and an over-use of stock footage makes it clear that the actors were never
anywhere near live bears, and yet Into
the Grizzly Maze still manages to stand above the rest thanks to a
surprisingly stacked cast. Despite the limited material, this cast keeps a
silly plot and amateur filmmaking far more entertaining than it deserves,
proving why a professional actor is an invaluable commodity. This is true even
in the films that are typically more interested in the carnage of its
characters than their believability. I’m not exactly certain how it happened
that this movie got such an undeservingly seasoned cast, but it ends up being
the only saving grace in the filmmaking process.
Into the Grizzly Maze is an awful title
for a simple premise involving a killer bear. This is essentially a throwback
to many eco-friendly horror films from the 1970s and beyond; Jaws in the woods, if you will. When a
massive bear in the Alaskan wilderness near a small town gets the taste of
human blood, it turns into a deadly killing machine that must be stopped. The
town’s sheriff, Beckett (Thomas Jane) enters the woods to find his deaf
ecologist wife (Piper Parabo), and coincidentally runs into his ex-convict
brother, Rowan (James Marsden). Both have experience with the wilderness, a
large portion of which was owned by their departed father, and their joint
effort may be the only chance for survival against the bloodthirsty beast.
Rowan enters the
woods to find an old friend named Douglass (Billy Bob Thornton), despite his
reputation for being a poacher. This puts him at odds with Beckett and his
wife, but Douglass’ experience as a hunter may be a valuable asset against the
rogue bear. In many other films from this genre, these scenes of character
development would be merely filler between bear attacks, but this dedicated
cast makes them the glue that holds everything together. Sadly, it is the
sequences with the bear which don’t quite make the grade.
I understand
that the biggest difficulty with a movie like this is the filming of an animal,
real or otherwise. This has always been the case, and even Jaws had some questionable effects in the attempt to film wildlife
attacks without using wildlife. It just happens that the tricks used in Into the Grizzly Maze are a bit more
transparent than they need to be for seamless entertainment. Whether it is
cross-cutting of actual bear footage with shots of the actors reacting, shoddy
CGI, or a hybrid of both in shots that juxtaposes real bear footage over the
separately filmed scenes of actors reacting, the filmmaking is rarely competent
enough to be convincing. Perhaps the entire budget went to the casting process.
The smartest thing the screenplay
does is provide many obstacles for the characters that are secondary to the
actual bear attacks. The tough terrain of the wilderness is just as much an
enemy to our protagonists as the bear itself, providing the opportunity for
suspenseful sequences that don’t involve shoddy CGI and transparent editing
techniques. It also places the suspense of the movie in the hands of the cast
members, who are all able to elevate this material in ways that it truly
doesn’t deserve.
The DVD release provides no special
features or answers as to how a film like this got made with this cast
Entertainment Value:
7/10
Quality of
Filmmaking: 5.5/10
Historical
Significance: 4/10
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