The Maus Review (2017) Worth Watching?

It's about a couple who get lost in the deep woods of Bosnia and may or may not have to fight for survival against some opportunistic Serbian criminals. It's hard to tell because the Bosnian girlfriend is craaaazyyyyy.

The Maus was directed by Yayo Herrero and stars Alma Terzic, August Wittgenstein and Aleksandar Seksan.

Going into this one, I wasn't sure what "the maus" meant in the context of this movie. According to the movie it's just something this German guy calls his Bosnian girlfriend, kinda weird. A quick Google search reveals it's either something in reference to the Holocaust (which doesn't make sense in the context of this movie, which is about a civil war beef) or it's an acronym for Hawaii's elite Maui Apple Users Society. Afterward I ran it through a translator to find 'maus' simply means 'mouse' in German. So this guy called his gf 'the mouse'?

Either way, the movie starts out very calm, very still. It's your typical road trip movie where a couple from the city are exploring nature when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. They could walk to the nearest town to get help, but it's just SO far. So instead they venture directly into the deep unfamiliar woods hoping to... stumble on a closer town? Couldn't be sure, but they venture into the deep unfamiliar woods.

This is when things actually start getting interesting, and very tense. There's virtually no score, everything is very quiet. You can hear every bird chirp. Every crunch of gravel beneath their shoes. Every snap of every twig. And as this couple makes their way to who knows where, it becomes clear that the girlfriend suffered some kind of crazy trauma in the past and is keeping some hardcore secrets from this poor guy. As this part of the story unfolds, the score really kicks in and is used effectively to build some serious tension.

But, that's about all you get. The Maus seriously slows down once things start getting good. It was honestly hard to stay engaged, there's just so much slow walking, slow talking and slow build ups to events that are ultimately anticlimactic.

Overall I'd say the vibe of The Maus is a cross between A Quiet Place and The Shrine. The story is somewhat similar to Eden Lake, in that a city couple are terrorized by backwoods locals. But, it's unfortunately nowhere near as good as any of these films.

Worth Watching?

I didn't dislike The Maus, but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it either. The premise of the movie is simple, the way the characters handle situations is predictable, and I found the story to be confusing. Everything also unfolds in a non-linear style that makes it a bit of a mind bender which was cool, but I found the ending to be intentionally ambiguous, that or I just didn't get it.