Dave Made A Maze is a horror film that doubles as a comedy but in a fun way.

Directed by Bill Watterson from a script co-written with Steven Sears, the film stars Nick Thune, Meera Rohit Kumbhani, James Urbaniak, Adam Busch, Kirsten Vangsness, John Hennigan, Scott Narver, Frank Caeti, and Timothy Nordwind.

If Super 8 made you nostalgic for the classic Steven Spielberg movies of the 1970s and 1980s, Dave Made A Maze will surely make you nostalgic for all the fun adventure movies of the 1980s except this one will come with a higher death toll.

We’re introduced to Dave (Thune), an artist looking to create something significant and he wants to go through with actually completing something for a change–something I can relate to as an aspiring screenwriter/filmmaker with many writing projects in various stages of the writing process.  Frustrated, he decides to build a fort in his living room of all places.   Things quickly spiral out of control and Dave quickly finds himself gets trapped inside a supernatural maze–one that can be seen as a metaphor for the creative process according to the director.

His girlfriend, Annie (Kumbhani), decides that enough is enough and against Dave’s judgement, she goes inside with Dave’s good friend, Gordon (Busch), and a film crew led by Harry (Urbaniak) and includes a cameraman (Narver) and boom operateor (Caeti) to rescue him.  Once inside, they realize it’s not that simple a maze.  There are booby traps all over and a Minotaur (Hennigan) is on the run.

This is Bill Watterson’s first feature film as a director and it’s a crazy fun ride once we’re on the inside.  Imagine your favorite 80s action films with today’s edgy comedy.  The film includes sets that feature puppetry, stop-motion animation, and optical illusions, too. All in all, there are 20 different sets in this film with a lot of cardboard…30,000 square feet to be exact.

“The Maze is unsafe because we are a threat to ourselves, and the ones we love, when we are mired in a frustrated, creatively constipated state,” says director Bill Watterson.  “The self-doubt, the lashing out, the introversion, the depression – these are the booby traps of a creative spirit…which naturally become swinging axes, spike beds, and anthropomorphized buzz saws in our film.”

Premiering at the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature, Gravitas Ventures will release Dave Made A Maze in select theaters on August 18, 2017.  In Chicago, the indie will play at Facets Cinematheque.  It will come back for one night only on September 20th at the Arclight Cinemas in Chicago as a part of the Slamdance Cinema Club.