If you listen closely, you can almost hear the elevator pitch on this one. It’s like Jaws, right? But, it’s in the forest – with a giant bear, guys with guns, and a token ballsy blonde to keep the ladies happy. Sure, it sounds like Into The Grizzly Maze basically writes itself, but the most cursory of looks at the newly released trailer suggests that this might actually have a very healthy B-movie pulse to it. What else could account for the presence of the legendary Scott Glenn, and Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton?
Directed by David Hackl (Saw V), and written by Guy Moshe (Bunraku) and J.R. Reher (making his feature length debut), the story sees two brothers reconnect with each other during a two day hike through their Alaskan childhood stomping ground. Unfortunately, it seems that their bonding experience coincides with a local bear attack issue, and the group finds themselves being hunted by the giant predator that is, apparently, quite angry about something.
We have James Marsden (The D Train) and Thomas Jane (Drive Hard) as the brothers, and Piper Perabo (Covert Affairs) as the token ballsy blonde along for the ride – because she is engaged to one of the brothers. Billy Bob Thornton and Scott Glenn provide the wisdom and experience and, of course, the whole thing is held together by Bart The Bear – the 8 foot 11 inch trained Alaskan brown bear that has previously starred in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Scrubs, Into The Wild, We Bought A Zoo and Game Of Thrones, among other projects.
This movie has evidently had a torturous path to release, having been filmed back in 2012 under the title Red Machine. It has since been renamed as Endangered, and again as Grizzly – before finally having its release date set as June 26th 2015, and its title set as Into The Grizzly Maze. Whether it fully embraces its B-movie premise or not remains to be seen, but the trailer certainly hints at something that could well be entertaining.
