The Mitesh Kumar Patel (The Man in the Maze, no relation to this film) directed Woman in the Maze started off in a predictable fashion, I was lulled into a safe sense of security. Around the halfway mark this haunted house horror turns into something slightly different, unexpectedly slightly more nasty than I had assumed this would be. That isn't a criticism, despite the various twists not really lighting up the sky, that change was a welcome one.
Gabbi Reynolds (Meredith VanCuyk - Nope, uncredited) works for a property developer, she has been assigned to check out some property in the area around a ghost town (Jerome, Arizona), whose title is convenient for the whole place has a history of spooky goings-on. She soon hits it off with land agent Owen Bannister (Joey Heyworth), with things seeming to be heading in a good direction. While staying at the mansion she had rented while in the area, Gabbi had been experiencing troubling nightmares and odd occurrences, and that comes to a head on her last night there when she comes to realise the mansion is haunted, and whatever evil resides there is determined to not let her leave.
From the pacing of the first half of the film I thought this would much more traditional than it turned out to be. Gabbi was having little moments of horror while alone in her rented property, but not too much was really going on, at least not much is going on for a horror film. I expected the middle act would include at least one research montage, likely of Gabbi in the local library, discovering the bad things that must have happened at her house. Instead this takes a little turn, with the nightmare Gabbi begins to have on her final night really ramping things up, to the extent she is trapped in the place with no way to contact the outside world. Here she finds the house itself is against her, as well as the angry spirits of those it has claimed before. Some neatly placed flashbacks reveal how the place came to be this way, while some nasty injuries Gabbi sustains made me realise this wasn't going to be a typical low threat supernatural horror.
I was never really sure exactly what was going on, a possible red herring of her car being towed away from the drive had me thinking maybe she was now a ghost and that more time had passed than it seemed. Regardless, the house is good at keeping her locked inside, while it is able to distort her screams and knocks for help, with people outside not able to see her even when she is just the other side of the window.
I liked how the subplot of her and Owen getting closer to each other was upended by a more threat filled second half. Makeup effects were decent, but a reliance on crisp and clean CG effects did get in the way of immersion, especially with the ghosts and objects that had a very fake looking effect of them fading away into nothing. Sometimes the effects were passable, but mainly it was very obvious they were computer generated.
The amount of characters were quite low, but the subplot of Owen and an officer attempting to find out what had happened to Gabbi meant the film wasn't justy VanCuyk's character wandering around carrying the film on her own. It culminates in some confusing moments that did suggest a darkness that brought to mind haunted house horror films of the early 2000s.
I'm glad the film went in the direction it did, even if parts of the third act had me a little too confused. There were a few surprises, though nothing groundbreaking, overall, this wasn't a bad indie horror. Woman in the Maze opens in theatres worldwide on October 6th, and comes to premium TVOD services on October 12th.
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