User Reviews

Despite the presence of talented actors Billy Bob Thornton and Scott Glenn, this hunted by a bear in the woods scenario, is so familiar there is little here of interest. If you have seen "The Edge" then you will know you are on well trodden territory, only difference being that "The Edge" is a great film, while "Into the Grizzly Maze" is not. Billy Bob Thornton easily has the best line in the movie " Makes no difference to a hungry bear if it's a logger or a "tree hugger", they all taste the same." The writing is weak, the editing poor, and all of the characters underdeveloped. Not recommended and "bearly" watchable. - MERK

This movie is not The Edge which in my opinion is one of the better movies ever made. Into the Grizzly Maze is definitely a B movie.

I put this movie on while my girlfriend had some friends over. They continually commented on how terrible it was, but with huge smiles on their faces. They were 100% maximum entertained. Some couldn't handle the gore, some couldn't look away in utter fascination.

The movie is just pure entertainment. The plot is very thin, the actors well known and the bear is menacing. At the end of the day it's better than most B movies.

Survival horror films will rarely crack the A Movie list, as The Edge did, but this is one of the more fun movies I've watched in a long time.

That said, it is not cinematic gold. It is perfectly executed for what it is supposed to be, a B movie with people getting slaughtered by a grizzly. What more do you want? What more can you expect?

Don't be fooled by the title or bear sighting of this movie, this is actually a slasher movie in disguise. Every clichés from three decades ago is here , including bear killer that pops out of nowhere, people stumbling when being chased and even the incompetent acts from the characters simply because the demand of plot. It's a mix of cheap effect and surprisingly famous names, but still a B movie.

The premise is simple, albeit slightly forced. A bear is on the loose, and this bear is particularly special for its murderous rampage. There are a lot of famous actors here such as Patrick Madsen, Thomas Jane and Billy Bob Thornton. All of which have plenty experience on action movies, even the supporting characters are familiar faces from either cinema or TV show.

However, the large cast doesn't mean a good story. As a matter of fact, the movie attempts to create too many subplots and none of them feel fascinating. There's the usual estranged family bonded together over the crisis, the tough guy who's determined to cap this bear and a couple girls who seem like padding to prolong movie.

This is far from a genuine survival story, the bear literally pops up out of nowhere like a paranormal stalker, which is strange considering the number of people assembled. It also has plot armor which makes the humans momentarily miss all their shots or this bulky bear manages to dodge in the nick of time. There's a mountain of inconsistencies here, and it just piles up towards the end, especially with the visibly subpar CGI.

One might get a bit of enjoyment from the slight horror, but Into the Grizzly Maze is nothing more than a poor imitation of Jaws or slasher flick, only with bear.

When bodies start showing up in an Alaskan forest a local sheriff and his estranged brother go about find the bear before a seasoned hunter does.

It's hard not to draw comparison to other persons versus nature films, to it's credit it has a seasoned studded cast in what could have been the Jaws (1975) or Moby Dick of Bear movies. The location scenery and setting is fantastic, and there's some grizzly scenes (no pun intended) of hard to watch dead bear cubs, body dismemberment and so on. There's an abundance of kills in the forest, lodge attacks and in cars. Even with Saw V director David Hackl and with writers Guy Moshe and J.R. Reher it oddly feels only as special as AVP Requiem's brotherly love and forest scenes mixed with Abominable (2006).

Veteran Scott Glenn, excellent James Marsden, Thomas Jane as a hunter character turned conservationist who butts heads with Billy Bob Thornton's hardened hunter can't fix the lack of tension or continuity. Neither can the fine looking actors distract the fact that there's a TV air about the whole affair. The score is however great coupled with some fine cinematography and the star, bear Bart, possibly related to the late Bart the Bear and his mother from Grizzly (1976) steals the show.

It's nowhere near executed as well as The Edge (1997) or Ghost in the Darkness (1997), nor does it say more about conservation than The Bear (1988). What could have been Jaws, is more Orca - The Killer Whale.

As a killer bear film on revenge it's up in the top ten, but how many murderous bear films are there?

When I read the storyline I thought I would like this movie especially when I saw some positive reviews. Plus there were some good actors in the cast. So, nature shots, good actors, all the ingredients for a good movie. But what a disappointment this was. It's one of the worst nature movies I saw in a long time. I just give it three stars because of some nature shots. The storyline is just awful. The actors were just doing their job, but when you have such a bad storyline it doesn't matter if you are a good actor or not. It's not going to save the movie. The movie is full of clichés that made me almost barf. Add to that the stupid idea that the bear is going to hunt everybody down in one night is too ridiculous for words. A bear that huge that it doesn't fit in your bedroom, professional hunters, poachers, and sheriffs, a lot of shooting, and never a hit. Those must be the lousiest shooters in history. Don't believe any positive review because it's a terribly bad movie.

I have recently watched this movie and i have to say i was pleasantly surprised as its not usually my type of movie. There obviously have been previous movies of the same genre, but my opinion this is by far the better option, you cannot go into movie like this and expect Oscar winning performances, but saying that James Marsden ( whose very under rated as an actor ) plays a great role, as do they all. He has a strong supporting cast in the very attractive Piper Perabo, Michaela McManus, Thomas Jane,and of course the great Scott Glenn and Billy Bob Thornton.......Just sit back and relax its a great film, there are worse things to do with your time for ninety minutes.....

I watched this movie on the strength of the actors, but was very disappointed by the storyline and execution. The movie made the female characters look weak, and the male characters were completely incompetent. For seasoned woodsmen, they were the lousiest shooters I've ever seen. All the characters were continuously placed in precarious and ridiculous scenarios to keep the tension moving, and it was all pointless. Just skip this one, there are much better movies out there.

"Even grizzlies can get lost down there." Rowan (Marsden) has finally come back home after being gone too long. He wants to head into the dangerous grizzly maze for hiking. His brother, Beckett (Jane) doesn't want him to go due to the recent attacks. Reluctantly Beckett heads in to protect Rowan, find his wife, and and find the bear before it attacks again. This is a movie that you pretty much know what your going to get. Action and tenseness. The cast is pretty amazing for a movie like this. The movie is exciting and entertaining but some of the actual story gets lost in between the action. That isn't a bad thing but when you watch this you watch it for one reason. This is the type of movie where you can almost predict whats going to happen and there aren't any real surprises, but that said it is entertaining and well worth your time. Overall, not as good as The Edge, but still exciting and the cast makes it better than it actually is. I give this a B.

I am seriously torn between opinions on this one. I'm actually somewhat of a fan of animal horror movies. I still think Jaws is one of the best horror films out there. I even somehow liked the Orca Rip-off. Seriously, the animal horror genre occupies a major part of the most fun B movies ever (strangely, the ones that come to mind are mostly shark focused....Deep Blue Sea, Ghost Shark, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon...). From my childhood I remember being really scared of titles like Tarantula, Kingdom of Spiders, Frogs, Razorback, Cujo and so on. Well, times change and I know just enjoy some dumb fun. And I really don't know if Grizzly actually fits my bill here.

I admit I was predominantly drawn to this movie by its cast - James Marsden, Thomas Jane, Billy Bob Thornton, and Piper Perabo (which I haven't seen for a long time). So my guess was that with such a pretty well known cast, they would have confidence in the movie and some budget associated with it. And again, I am not sure...

So the actors actually do their job pretty well. Their performance is probably one of the reasons why the movie is sometimes quite gripping and tense. The setting is quite nice - foggy gritty cold forest. The plot is pretty much what you expect...and even if you have low expectations it is kind of a lackluster.

I think the biggest gripe I have is with the bear "effects" and associated with it the cinematography and editing. I am quite astonished how they managed to actually make the bear feel real and menacing and at the same time weirdly harmless. Sometimes the bear appears huge and some of the attacks are really grippy. Other times you feel that the bear is just prancing around like a nice little teddy. They used real bear footage for the most part, which is nice, but somehow feels fake at the same time. No idea how they did that. There is quite an amount of gore as well. And some of the attacks were quite hard to watch - although the victims showed some questionable defense behavior. At the same time, there are a lot of cheap off-screen deaths. This is not similar to Jaws, where it's done tastefully and suspenseful - here it just seems very cheap - like in the average low budget TV movie. That transgresses to a general problem here - the editing. A lot of the scenes are like this: Bear growling - people looking in fear - bear standing - people deciding to run away - bear prancing towards them - people actually running away scared of their life (and that quite authentically) - bear catching up with one of them - people shooting at the bear and missing - bear turning around and running towards the shooter - shooter looking dumb and shooting and missing again - bear closing in on shooter - other people shooting and missing - bear turning towards other people...you catch the drift.

There is just not enough real interaction or shots with the bear and people together convincingly to make this movie really good. As mentioned, the effects are good and bad at the same time - CGI was avoided most of time, and when it was used, it was OK. But generally, it has just this extreme cheap TV movie feel. It is also not over the top, which could have saved it. If there is humor in this movie, it is extreme subtle...to the extend that I'm not sure if I noticed it.

So in sum, really, I have no idea what to make of it. I do not recommend it. That's for sure. But I also do not hate it. I somehow do not really care (despite this long review...). And oh yeah, and the ending is really cheap.

I have seen so many killer bear movies, and none of them have really pulled it off really well. I am pleased to say that this is the best killer bear movie I have ever seen. How you can train a bear to do all of that is completely amazing! The plot is pretty good, but not great. But at the same time, it's quite simple. People are getting killed in the Grizzly Maze and when a bunch of rednecks come by and start killing the bear's babies, you can imagine it doesn't help the situation at hand. The bear is now angry, and goes on an even bigger rampage to kill everything and everyone.

The acting was good, especially from James Marsden, Piper Perablo and Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Bob Thornton plays the professional, greedy, annoying bear hunter, and to be honest, he was hardly in it. He was only in it for 15 minutes.

Overall, it was a great movie. I was never bored. I was always interested. The script was a bit weak, but the main actors did well with what they had.

Overall, I would give this movie an 8/10. The final showdown was pure genius! And Bart The Bear is the best acting bear I have ever seen! Definitely recommended.

Review: I really didn't have high expectations for this film because it seemed like one of those typical, cheap straight to DVD movies but it actually wasn't that bad. The director spent some time giving the individual characters a background, so it didn't seem like a bunch of people in the woods running away from a massive bear. Anyway, the films about a guy called Rowan (James Marsden) who returns to his town to look for his friend who is missing in the woods. On his first night there, he picks up a girl in a bar and he takes her back to his hotel but the girl turns out to be a prostitute so he turfs her out and she ends up getting in trouble with her pimp. After saving her from a beating, he ends up in a fight on the street with the pimp so the police are called out to stop the brawl. His brother Beckett (Thomas Jane) happens to be the town sheriff so he picks him up at the incident and he questions him to find out why he has come back after such a long time. After spending the night with his brother, dead bodies turn up in the woods so Beckett goes to investigate while Rowan starts his journey to find his missing friend. As Becketts wife is in the woods taking pictures, he decides to go and find her because it's been reported that there is a killer bear on the loose. Rowan ends up saving Becketts wife from the killer bear and they all end up trapped in the wilderness. The only path home is through the Grizzly Maze but they have to tackle the angry beast to get back to safe ground. There is some intensity through the movie which I found quite enjoyable. The acting was pretty good from the whole cast, which made there situation feel believable, especially as the director chose to use a real bear. There are other elements that kept the movie interesting, like the poachers who were killing bears for money and Billy Bob Thorntons character who was a top class hunter, so there is some depth to the storyline. The action scenes at the end were also well put together and very intense so I don't know why this movie didn't make it to the cinema. There are some decent actors in the film like Billy Bob Thornton, Thomas Jane and James Marsden who seems to be in loads of movies nowadays, so I'm surprised that it went straight to DVD. Anyway, I quite enjoyed the movie and the fact that the director chose to use a real bear made it a joy to watch. Watchable!

Round-Up: James Marsden, 42, seems to be covering every genre in his career by starring in movies like the X-Men as Cyclops, Superman Returns, Hairspray, Enchanted, 27 Dresses, The Box with Cameron Diaz, The Butler, 2 Guns with Denzel Washington, Anchorman 2 and Unfinished Business so he really has covered every spectrum of acting. He very rarely takes the lead in movies, but he definitely makes his presence known with his unique acting style and dashing smile, which is mentioned in Anchorman 2. Thomas Jane, 46, who plays his brother in this film, has struggled to make it as an A list actor but he has starred in some decent movies like Face Off, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Scott Pilgrim and Hustlers with the late Paul Walker but he's never played the lead in any of those movie. The one big disappointment of his career has to be the awful Punisher reboot which really didn't do his career any good. That was mainly due to the director who really failed to reboot the franchise but he hasn't been able to star in a big screen movie ever since. This movie was directed by David Hackl who also directed Saw V. He hasn't got that much experience behind the camera but I think that he done a decent job with this movie. He had some professional actors to work with, which included a bear and the storyline was well written so he must be happy with his achievements, especially as it's his only his second film.

Budget: $10million Worldwide Gross: N/A

I recommend this movie to people who are into their action/horror/thrillers about a group of people in the wilderness trying to escape from a killer bear. 5/10

This is one of the worst movies of all time. Snooze fest. The acting was terrible and it had some quality big name actors in it. The Bear scenes are laughable.

I'm not a huge horror fan however I read the write up and wanted to see this.

I'll say from the outset that these realistic horrors scare the hell out of me! A bit like Cujo- a rabid dog could easily go on a rampage. In this case, a slightly angry bear goes after anyone who comes near him or enters his territory.

Now the limit of my knowledge of bears is next to nothing given the only bears we have here in Australia are Koalas (and the stuff we tell tourists about them being drop bears, attacking people, peeing on you from the trees, etc) is rubbish! But good for a laugh.

Based on that limited knowledge, I have no idea how realistic this movie is. I don't know how big they get. I don't know how likely they are to attack.

But either way, I'll stick to camping in the caravan park after watching this. I'll feel a bit safer than out in the wilderness.

Talking wilderness, the scenery in this movie is incredible. Whilst I don't want to hike or camp there now (in case of bears), the cinematography is pretty impressive.

Overall, a good movie....

Into the Grizzly Maze is about as low grade B-movie as you can get, with the exception of its start lit cast.

Basically a horror film where an animal is the killer, ala Jaws or more closely Anaconda, Into the Grizzly Maze is about two brothers who must reunite despite their strained relationship in order to hunt down a bear on a killing spree. Set in the Alaskan wilderness, these men, along with other trained experts, think they are on the animals trail to only find out the unrelenting grizzly bear is in fact stalking them.

I'll admit, I don't like animal horror films. I dislike the idea of an animal on the rampage because typically it sparks unnecessary paranoia. Especially since I am on the east coast where bears seem to be wandering into populated area, thanks to deforestation, and the group terror causes them to be put down rather than relocated. But, the relative mystery of the film's existence coupled with the name-y cast was enough for me to give it a try.

Coincidentally, Into the Grizzly Maze is a terrible film with a flimsy unoriginal plot and horrible CGI. No amount of actors such as James Marsden, Piper Perabo, Thomas Jane or Billy Bob Thornton can save it, though their acting is far beyond the subject matter of the film. The film is just your basic 'killer animal on the loose' film and seems to have devolved from the original premise of being based on Timothy Treadwell's life.

Overall, the film just does not work. Despite a couple of grisly deaths, the film is not scary. Perhaps it is because of the bear, who though we know to be dangerous and powerful, just comes across as lumbering and slow on screen. The director does nothing to add to the menace or to highlight the strength and hazards of the creatures clawed paws or gigantic jaw. The use of green screen for death scenes and poor CGI when the bear was supposed to be touching and attacking characters is distracting and almost laughable.

Into the Grizzly Maze is without merit in being green lit for film, and it is no wonder this film was released on the down low. There's no character development or back story, except when told cheaply through conversations. It is without creativity and talent and is wholly unoriginal.

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This movie attempted to be a bit different, they opted to make a realistic horror. A sleepy town is terrorised by a savage Grizzly bear. It's kind of like a Bear version of Jaws.

It's carnage in the forest, body parts start appearing, the powers that be realise quickly that the miscreant is a bear, not just any bear, it's a smart and clever unique bear! I'd almost go so far as to say a criminal mastermind and king of subterfuge. A small team consisting of two estranged brothers, A Sheriff, his deputy. The most interesting character being Michelle, a girl out photographing in the woods and happens to be deaf.

The best thing about the film has to be the visuals, they were never going to fail with the shots of the landscapes, seriously beautiful, almost awe inspiring.

Some of the effects are good, some of them are a bit amateur. The shots of the bear not attacking are great, they are glorious animals who couldn't enjoy those (Salmon I guess.) It's some of the attack scenes that look a wee bit dodgy, as viewers I guess we expect so much.

There are lots of tense moments, you are waiting for the Bear to appear and you never know when, but some of the scenes with long drawn out dialogues seem to go on forever.

Interesting finale, the Bear decides not to rip his victims apart in seconds, but to make a meal out of it.

The acting is mixed I'd have to say, James Marsden is a cut above, he us pretty good, the film was a surprising choice I guess, but good on him for doing something not mainstream. Billy Bob Thornton does a good job at making his character rather nauseating, but he's as much screen time as he perhaps should have been. Some of the lesser parts aren't great, some of the Sheriff's team seem like they've wandered into the film.

It's a bit of furry fun. 6/10.

The Name Cast draws Attention to this "Monster on the Loose' Movie. James Marsden, Thomas Jane, Billy Bob Thornton, Scott Glenn, and Piper Perabo.

Oh Yea..."Bart the Bear" gets Opening On Screen Credit too.

All do Workmanlike efforts to make this an Entertaining Out of Doors Thriller. It's all about the Killings, Maulings, and Shreddings done in Thankfully "R" Rated fashion. The Story is Weak but at times is Interesting Enough to Listen.

The "Pissed-Off" Grizzly is Hostile because of Greedy Poachers and Bootleg Loggers. He's Smarter than the Average Bear and has taken it upon Himself to Do Something about these Homo Sapiens. He's there to "Kick-Ass and Chew Bubblegum"...oh wait... He's doesn't Chew Bubblegum, just Human Flesh.

In one of the Movie's Best Lines, Billy Bob Thornton's Nerdy but Lethal Hunter says..."This bear doesn't care if you're a Poacher or a Tree Hugger, You all taste the same."

Overall, Worth a Watch for some B-Movie Excitement. It's done on the Semi-Cheap and these Type of Things have been around since Forever. "Are You Not Entertained?"

Only You can answer that question.

This is the first time I am writing a review in IMDb. In my lifetime I have watched over 3000 movies and "Into the Grizzly Maze" is among the worst I've ever seen. How can all these people with Guns miss an over grown fat bear. A ten year who has never handled a gun would have hit the bear at that close range, and by the way most of the guns has telescopic lens attached. And another awkward character in the movie is a girl who plays a deaf character venturing all alone deep into the woods to take photographs. Poor editing, poor suspense and scenes poorly shot. Such a waste of talented actors. It is really a pity as it could have been a better movie if handled by a talented director. So disapppointed!

Talk about a refreshing little thriller. This was pure fun from beginning to end. Nice to see some legitimate actors in a film rather than teens running around, being dumb and smoking dope in every scene. That seems to be the norm in Hollywood films lately. This is just a straight shooter with an angry ass bear creating some mayhem. Not sure why there was a hooker in the film, that seemed a bit weird, but whatever. Billy Bob Thornton versus a bear wins in my opinion. My teens liked it as well. They were yelling at the screen for the characters to run. I like that they used a real bear for a majority of it. And in fact that it was the same bear from GAME OF THRONES is even way cooler. I think we've had enough cgi in movies lately.