400 Days (2015) Movie Review

400 Days (2015) IMDB

400 Days (2015) movie poster

Do you remember the movie from 1996 starring Pauly Shore called Bio-Dome ? Pauly and his friend get stuck in a long term science experiment that they can’t leave for a year. This movie has a similar concept but more Sci-Fi based, with 4 astronauts locked in a 400 day simulation of travel to another planet to test their psyche. One day things go awry and weird stuff starts happening. Is it part of the simulation and a test ? The movie watcher and the crew are both trying to figure it out what is going on.

During an ‘episode’ one of the crewmembers locks himself in a room where he has appears to have a drawn a maze on the walls that he is now solving. He is not in his right mind (offensive for us maze lovers no ?). Here is a look at the scene:

400 Days movie maze scene

If you like sci-fi you have a better chance to like this film, but you will be wanting more (answers, better acting, better bad guys). Can the team survive 400 days and what will find if they do ? Unfortunately, Brandon Routh (Superman) and Dane Cook can’t save this flic.

I give it a 5/10.

Check out the trailer:

Tale of Tales (2015) Movie Review

Tale of Tales (2015) IMDB

Tale of Tales (2015) movie poster

Tale of Tales is a movie about a variety of fairytales intertwined into 3 different storylines that revolve around kings and queens. You get some nice performances from Salma Hayek, John C Reilly, Vincent Cassel, and Toby Jones and the cinemaphotography is also good. It is also a movie that won a lot of awards for costume design, which I did not know until researching the movie after having watched it, and I must say that makes a lot of sense. The story is loosely based off of the fairytales of Italian Giambattista Basile who lived from 1566 - 1632.

There is a maze scene in the movie because Salma Hayek’s queen character has a stone maze outside her castle. Check out the screengrab below. While most movies would have gone with a traditional hedge maze in the gardens, this stone version looks daunting, and hot (or extra cold in the Winter).

Tale of Tales (2015) maze scene

Overall, there are some nice moments in the movie, and it is worth a watch if you like movies from this period or enjoy any of the actors.

I give it a 6.3/10.

Check out the trailer:

Shock Labyrinth (2009) Movie Review

Shock Labyrinth (2009) IMDB

Shock Labyrinth (2009) movie poster

If someone said to you - ‘Hey do you want to watch a movie or would you rather be punched in the face 5 times ?’ you would naturally say, I’ll take the movie. But that is the WRONG answer. First you need to see what the movie is. If it is this movie, take the beating. Not only is it horrible and make no sense but you have to read the subtitles. I will grant one exception. This movie may cure insomnia. I can’t confirm it, but I think someone should give it a try.

There are kids stuck in a mazelike hospital…blah blah blah. There is a 3D version which seems like it could be used for advanced torture ? This is a hard pass obviously.

Originally this movie was called Senritsu meikyû 3D which is Japanese for [insert joke here about how bad this movie is]. The weird thing about this movie is that the director is Takashi Shimizu who is known for all of the Grudge movies which are pretty good. Watch those instead of this.

You will not be surprised that this made my list of 10 Unbelievably Bad Maze Movies to Never, Ever Watch.

I give it a 3.3/10.

Additional posts and sections you may like:

The 10 best maze themed horror movies

The 10 best maze movie posters

Escape Room (2017) Movie Review

Escape Room (2017) IMDB

Escape Room 2017 movie poster

First we need to do some housekeeping. This movie is Escape Room from 2017 directed by Will Wernick. At the time of me writing this it has about 15K votes on IMDB and had a box office of $1.9M worldwide. It is not the much more popular Escape Room from 2019 directed by Adam Robitel with 157K votes and a $158M worldwide box office that led to the sequel Escape Room Tournament of Champions. That is probably the one you know. But it is also not the movie Escape Room from 2017 directed by Peter Dukes with 5K votes and a box office of $2.6M. I see how you could be confused, There is also The Escape Room, a short from 2020 and No Escape Room, a TV Movie from 2018. If you think that is the end of the housekeeping, I am assuming none of you will confuse the Catalan language movie from Spain, Escape Room: La pel-licula with the movie I will speak about today.

This movie caught my eye initially as I was browsing a movie site and I noticed the poster that included a maze. At first I thought it was the box office success above from 2019 which I had already seen, but some quick IMDB detective work said this was something new. The plot is what you would think. A group of friends goes to an Escape Room, in this case for a person’s birthday. It’s all fun and games until things get a bit too real. The puzzles are ok but the motivations behind the narrative seemed a bit weak to me. I never felt very tense watching the movie, which is a problem with this kind of movie. Escape rooms are conditional mazes in a sense. In order to move forward in a conditional maze you must follow the conditions or rules given and an escape room the condition to move forward is solving a puzzle.

I mentioned the movie poster for this above. And I want to show you 3 more versions of it alongside the original, all featuring mazes. If you are interested in posters, check out my blog The 10 Best Maze Themed Movie Posters.

I really like the full maze on the door ! Which do you prefer ?

Escape Room 2017 set of 4 movie posters

Back to the movie. It is not very good.

I give it a 4.3/10.