Nowhere As Clever As It Thinks It Is

Rating: 6/10 (26 November 2014)

This got a lot of critical acclaim on its release . A very low budget Canadian thriller whose premise is a group of strangers wake up and find themselves trapped in a maze of rooms and right away the audience are asking themselves the important questions . Who are these people ? Why are they there ? What is this structure they're trapped in ? Who ? Why ? What ? and Where ? It's also good that the producers keep faith in the premise . All the on screen action takes place in the confined structure but this is probably down to budget limitations rather than creative decisions but that's not a criticism . What might be a problem is that is convincing the audience that this is possible in real life and not having the audience asking questions that will destroy the illusion
I'm afraid that's where the film falls down to a large degree . Don't get me wrong I did enjoy this film for the most part but a few things did annoy me ? I take it the revelation that there's almost 18,000 rooms isn't true ? I mean having something like that would be impossible to keep secret , especially if the rooms themselves are able to move . Fair enough I was puzzled by two whys ? If you're going to trap people in what is effectively a giant puzzle box why fill it with people who have the ability to think ( Pun alert ) outside the box ? The other why is why would someone go to all the trouble to doing this in the first place ? In other words the scenario seems to exist merely to set up the premise for a movie with no logic beyond that . It's also a film that offers no explanations which makes for a frustrating ending that has little in the way of pay off