Meander (2020) - Movie Review

What do you get when you meld Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ On Grief and Grieving, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, and Cube?

A mixed bag.

—Ba-dum-tss—

What did you expect?

Meander is a French Science Fiction thriller brought to us by writer/director Mathieu Turi. Don’t worry, no one knows who he is. This isn’t a movie you would have been anticipating.

Wait.

What was the last movie you anticipated?

I think Midsommar was mine, comment yours below.

Anyways, so this is a movie no one knew about from a nobody director. Don’t freak out. This isn’t the shortest review ever. The movie’s not awful. In fact, I think in a few respects it’s extremely good. It just doesn’t make much sense.

If you are someone who needs exposition, that is to say, if you like getting all your questions answered by the end of the film—this isn’t a movie for you. Let me paint a picture for you.

This is like if the TV show LOST had a baby with Donnie Darko.

…

Like I said: MIXED BAG

Let’s start with non-spoilery good things.

The acting is fantastic. There’s really only three actors in the film and they all fit like perfect pieces to this all black jigsaw puzzle. This film is almost entirely non-verbal storytelling. To do a film like that and have it even be half-watchable, you need an actress who can shoulder that load. This film happens to have a damn fine leading lady in Gaia Weiss. She’s probably best known for her recurring role of Porunn on History Channel’s fantastic Vikings. She is a former professional ballerina and that is the more important experience for this film. When it comes to non-verbal storytelling, you can’t get much older than Ballet. As a ballerina, Gaia is able to portray injuries and ailments with a fluidity and believability that forces you to wince and sigh. Every movement she does in this film is real. She never forgets to sell the wounds she’s received. It really pulls you in and increases the tension.

This is an edge of your seat film. It’s basically a much more difficult version of the fantastic film CUBE. This deathtrap rat maze is wacky difficult. Whether it’s the irradiated zombies, guillotine blades, incinerating torches, or one of the other various hazards that our heroine runs into, it looks fantastic. The visual effects team did a lot of work with what I can only think is a minuscule budget. There’s a heavy Cronenberg element to the special effects. There’s body horror a plenty. Both the practical and digital effects look great considering this is an indie film. The music is pretty solid as well. It is definitely stress music that can be overbearing at times, but it gets the job done.

This is a pulse pounding thriller with heavy sci-fi/horror elements. It’s intense and brutal, but there is very little dialogue. This is almost a silent film. Our protagonist proceeds through the maze solo. So, if you are expecting witty dialogue and one-liners, this isn’t a film for you. I would compare it to Valhalla Rising, but that film has way better cinematography, storytelling, just go watch Valhalla Rising.

I can’t take it anymore.

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

Spoilers

What the hell is this movie about? I can’t find a true, definite explanation online. I only have my own conjecture which is as follows.

Lisa is suffering from survivor’s guilt over the death of her daughter. She was out partying and left her three-year-old home alone. Her daughter climbs through a window and falls four stories to her death. Racked with grief, Lisa goes out into the French countryside to die. She picks out an unlit highway in the middle of nowhere and lays down. She has second thoughts and is then approached by a passing motorist. She hitches a ride with said motorist and they get into a scuffle after it’s revealed that he’s a serial killer by a radio broadcast. The car crashes.

What follows next differs from what we saw in the movie. I believe Lisa is an unreliable narrator. I think she believes what she is seeing is real, that the tubes and the trapdoors exist, and I do too—just in a different context.

The Car crashes—Lisa and her attacker are trapped in the car. Lisa, caught between the part of herself who longs for death and the remaining humanity that clings onto life, projects her own reality on the situation. In her mind, her leg is burned by an acid trap. In reality, her leg was burned by the flaming oil.

See what I’m getting at?

I believe her injuries and the medical care she received was all real, but Lisa couldn’t understand. Lost in grief, she was trapped in a maze. The traps, the visions, all of it were representations of her grief. Much like the phases of grief in Kubler-Ross’ On Grief and Grieving, the rooms of the maze represent each step. The car crash is the shock, the delusion is the denial, her violent conflict with the serial killer in the maze is her anger, the meeting with her daughter in the hall of mirrors is the bargaining, depression is her path away from the hall of mirrors, flipping the code near the end is her testing stage, and the final stage acceptance finally comes with her death.

What Lisa sees is a Childhood’s End style ascension from this plane of existence.

What’s really happening is that she’s accepted that she’s not going to survive her injuries. Her heart gives out, whether from exertion or grief, she finished her journey.

That’s just my idea of what this film is actually about. If you’ve got another idea, his me up in the comments or on the ‘Gram.

Watch this film if you like mind bending science fiction, brutal SAW-like traps, and dig beautiful viking women.

Meander is currently exclusive to Amazon Prime Video.