I used to be a regular listener of a podcast called Nooner, which is where I first heard of DAVE MADE A MAZE, as one of the co-hosts, Bill Watterson, mentioned it as a project he was working on. Although Nooner lapsed out of my listening rotation a while ago, simply because I have too many podcasts to listen to and not enough hours in the week, I was very glad to see Watterson's completed film show up on the Arrow in the Head radar.
Directed by Watterson from a screenplay he wrote with Steven Sears, DAVE MADE A MAZE is a sci-fi horror comedy that tells the following story:
Dave, an artist who has yet to complete anything significant in his career, builds a fort in his living room out of pure frustration, only to wind up trapped by the fantastical pitfalls, booby traps, and critters of his own creation.
Described as a re-imagining of ‘80s adventure films “with a modern comedic edge and a higher body count”, it stars Nick Thune, Meera Rohit Kumbhani, Adam Busch, and Kirsten Vangsness.
The film features puppetry, stop-motion animation, in-camera opticals, and sets built out of scrap cardboard. Watterson had this to say about the special effects:
We wanted to play in the sandbox of old-school practical effects – puppetry, stop motion animation, cut paper animation, and optical illusions – to reignite that tactile sense of wonder from the movies of my childhood. When you watch a Harryhausen film, or a Henson creation, the creatures are hypnotic and magical because they’re real; they have real texture, depth, weight, and life. We built a team of artists whose hands would be apparent throughout the process; we wanted to see the pencil lines, the excess glue, the imperfection of a creative mind at work. That had to be baked into the production design for the world to seem real and relevant.”
DAVE MADE A MAZE is currently making the festival rounds, with its Texas premiere coming up on Wednesday, July 19th at Flix Brewhouse as part of Other Worlds Austin SciFi Film Festival’s Orbiter Year-Round Series.
A trailer for the film can be seen below. Check it out and see if this handmade fantasy world is a land you would like to venture into.