The Maus

If you remove the scenes that involve walking, the transitions between scenes where the screen is black and the scenes dominated by the backs of heads... You'll have 3 mins of actual content left. The blackout transitions were so long my TV actually went into standby mode a few times.

Not a horror film in the scene of pop ups. More like the affects of war on people. If you're looking for an action packed horror with pop ups and jump scares this isn't it. Good film could've been better if it explained some stuff, which is didn't do on purpose for the sake of interpretation. The more you think about the film the better it seems to you, if you just watch it you probably won't enjoy it as much.

This movie does open up a lot of room for discussion on what happened in the film. If you are open to a movie about affect of war on people and how it changes/divides them, with a neutral party being involved watch this, but if not I wouldn't recommend this.

The Maus is one these films in which the location serves to create a meaningful part of the overall discomforting mood. As always, it comes with all sorts of supporting (or unsupportive from the protagonists' perspective) features, such as no cellular reception and a language barrier. While I'm not a fan of using these particular defining aspects, I must admit that including the female protagonist's obvious (and completely understandable) PTSD after surviving the Serbian cleansing of Bosnian Muslims added a lot of character and quality to the story.

The plot is quite simple to understand from the film's description (and from watching the first ten minutes). Selma (Alma Terzic) and her boyfriend Alex (August Wittgenstein) visit Bosnia and become stranded and lost in one of its vast forests, which happens to be riddled with unmarked mine fields. By chance they happen to meet two "local" Serbs, Vuk (Aleksandar Seksan) and Milos (Sanin Milavic), who offer to assist them. From that point - reality and paranoia become mixed and intertwined as Selma initially distrusts the two on account of their origin, seeing in them the same type of people who murdered her family during the war.

The acting is quite impressive (especially by Seksan and Milavic whose performance keeps the audience guessing as to their true intentions and nature and Selma's sanity) and the story progresses in a very compelling way. Each and every scene seems to have been meticulously chosen to serve the film's conclusion and final plot twist (which isn't brilliant but definitely serves as a fine and terrible closure). While in no way "fun" to watch - The Maus is pretty rewarding for Horror fans who enjoy being depressed by human nature and what we can at times bring ourselves to do to our fellow man.

All in all, The Maus is far from being a masterpiece and none of its features are delivered in an overly impressive manner. It's simple enough and does a pretty decent job in toying with the audience's thoughts and emotions (which I assume was the creators' initial goal). Nothing fancy, yet quite rewarding by its own right. I don't think it deserves the low rating and all the harsh criticism it has received here (now there's a surprise), but you could still find something better (or a lot worse) to watch.

And this is one of them.

I kinda got what the director was trying to say and it does work in certain aspects but the film is too dark , depressing and slow.

It is quite visceral and while there isn't a lot of gore and much is left to the imagination, it is in the vein of torture porn akin to movies like Hostel.

It started off quite well and seemed an original setting in Bosnia but the pace is turgid and the lack of subtitles does have a slightly negative effect on the viewer and I speak Slovak and Czech and could understand some of what was being said, it still was annoying and confusing to not know exactly what is being said at times and I know the director was using this for effect but it did not work in my opinion!

Its definitely not a 1 or 2 out of 10 as many of the other reviewers have said but then you cannot legislate for the crash, bang, wallop expectations of the pea brained reviewers who cannot seem to delve into the deeper elements of the subject and story the director was trying to put forth! The acting also was not bad , particularly from the female lead; i though she was excellent contrary once again to all the other reviewers who gave it a poor 1 out of 10 which means its the worst movie you have ever seen which it definitely is not; we have movies like "THE BAD BATCH" for that!

This movie is certainly a lot of the following:

• waiting for something to happen
• back of heads
• veeery blurry background with important scenes
• black screens
• scenes with spinning camera
• mines

All in all 90 minutes of wasted time if you ask me.