Méandre / Meander, movie (2020)
image © Full Time Studio & Cinéfrance Studios & Equitime & WTFilms
Article updated: 2022.02.18
The Meander (2020) is a contemporary fantasy survival horror film. The movie was reviewed by Kadmon.
Product: Méandre / Meander, movie (2020)
Original title: Méandre, English title: Meander
Series: -
Setting: contemporary fantasy Earth
Product type: Film, Genre: contemporary fantasy survival horror, Style: sci-fi, thriller, fantasy, contemporary fantasy, horror, survival horror, aliens
Release: Premiere: 2020.10.11 (Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival), Release: 2021.05.26
Reviewer: Kadmon, Type: Male, 40s, Preferences: Immersive, logical story, consistent setting, prefers surprises to spoilers, prefers establishing elements before referencing them
Watched: very recent (2021.11), first time
Rating: Average (2 out of 3 points), Enjoyment: Good (2+ out of 3 points)
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This is my review of Meander, a contemporary fantasy survival horror movie from 2020. It's about a woman abducted to be trapped in a strange place. The Meander film is interesting, I recommend it to fans of the genre.
If you'd like to be surprised by the Meander film, I don't recommend you to watch the trailer beyond 0:28, because it starts to give away parts of the plot. It basically provides a summary of the film, up to the ending scene, it's only some twists at the very end we are not shown.
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Review (spoiler-free) - Meander, movie (2020)
I've first heard about Meander, when I've read a review about the movie, that made it look like it's another Cube / Saw clone. However, when I had the chance to actually watch the film, I decided I'll give it a try. I didn't watch the trailer, and I didn't remember any specific from the review.
The Meander movie is about a woman abducted to be trapped in a strange place.
The story is good, there are some interesting twists, although dramatically it's far from perfect. The pacing is okay. There are no character arcs. There were no major logical problems.
The cinematography is okay, I think they got the maximum out of the situation.
Although there are only two main characters, we don't really get to know them. Their portrayal by the actors are okay.
The music was okay. I especially liked the score for the credits, if the music was similar during the movie itself, I was distracted by the action on screen.
Meander is an interesting survival horror, I think some fans of the genre might enjoy it.
My experience
I was satisfied with Meander (2020).
Rating: Average (2 out of 3 points). Meander is a watchable film, enjoyable for a select audience.
Enjoyment: Good (2+ out of 3 points). Meander is interesting, I liked it.
Rewatchability: I'm not sure. I think it's mostly the surprise of the story that makes you feel interested. But if you like the theme, you might rewatch Meander for multiple times.
Chance of watching it again: I don't think so. Now that I know the story, there's no need to watch it again.
Chance of watching a sequel: High. I'd sure watch it.
Méandre / Meander, movie (2020)
image © Full Time Studio & Cinéfrance Studios & Equitime & WTFilms
Will you enjoy this?
If you like mystery or thriller movies, you might like Meander.
If you like horror or action thriller movies (Alien, Cube), you might like the film, although there are not many action scenes or scary scenes in the Meander movie.
If you get through the first 5 or 10 minutes of the Meander film without rolling your eyes, you might enjoy the movie.
If you can get through the first half hour of the movie still interested, you'll get the same from the rest of the movie, with some slight twists.
from then on it gets into gear, and you might even love this.
If you prefer visuals over story, this might be a little boring, due to the lack of variety in sets.
If you dislike claustrophobic movies, Meander is not for you.
If you hate watching people suffer emotionally, you shouldn't watch this movie.
If you hate watching people endure physical wounds, you should avoid Meander.
Watching for plot points
If you are interested in survival horror stories, I think it's worth watching the Meander movie for the plot points.
Should you watch this on your own screen at home, or is it worth going to the cinema?
The visuals probably look better if you watch it in cinema, but due to the many close-ups and the claustrophobic nature of the film, you'll probably get a similar experience.
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Méandre / Meander, movie (2020)
image © Full Time Studio & Cinéfrance Studios & Equitime & WTFilms
Review with spoilers - Meander, movie (2020)
I liked the Meander movie. I could imagine it as a prequel to Dark City or Predators.
The main problem is that there's practically no tension in the story, but I still enjoyed it due to the variety of tests and the twists of the plot.
Cover
The cover of the movie is okay, it doesn't say much, but it doesn't spoil the movie.
The trailer
The trailer is basically a substitute for watching the movie.
If you prefer spoilers, it's a great trailer for the Meander film. If you prefer to avoid spoilers, it will ruin the movie for you.
Promise of the first scene
A girl is taken into a car by a man, who is likely a killer. I assume that she'll get captured, but she'll escape. She'll probably take revenge on the man, or rescue fellow captives, who were about to be killed by him.
Execution: Well, almost. She actually killed the man, but not as a revenge. However, I liked the twists, so I'm okay with the misleading promise.
Plot summary / Synopsis
There's a woman (Gaia Weiss as Lisa), who mourns her lost daughter on her birthday, alone in the woods. She is found by a man (Peter Franzén as Adam), and asks her if he can take her to the city. She agrees, and they talk for a while, until the man asks about her family, that makes her sad. To break the silence, she turns on the radio, that's reporting about a serial killer on the loose, with a distinct tattoo. The woman realises that the man is the one they are looking for, but then the man suddenly brakes, and the woman hits her head.
The woman finds herself in a small closed room, made of metal, with a glowing device attached to her hand. Then a door opens up to a long tunnel. When she enters, the door closes behind her. She is then put through a series of obstacles in a labyrinth, that test her phyisical and mental endurance.
She meets with the man, who looks like he has been here for at least weeks, due to his beard and long hair. The man attacks her, leading her to cut his hand off. On the cut hand, under the device, she finds some marks. It is also revealed that the whole thing is the work of aliens, when a medical device treats her wounds, and the device gives her memories back. She was attacked by the man, and got badly wounded, when the aliens arrived. When she gets far enough on the test, she is rewarded in a memory chamber with her childhood memories. When she makes a mistake, she gets back to the starting point.
After a while she comes to the realisation that those marks are clues to the labyrinth, so she removes her device, revealing her clues. She follows them, as the severly wounded man chases her, until she kills him. There's a part of the labyrinth with walls of pulsating flesh, and biological opening as doors. At the last turn, she is tempted by the vision of her daughter to go the wrong way, but as she knows that it's just a vision, she ignores the daughter. The vision fades.
She gets out of the labyrinth, and she finds a habitat, that's similar to Earth. The vision of the girl tells her that she has to live here.
The setting
The beginning is set on contemporary Earth.
The rest of the movie is set on either an alien planet, or on some spaceship, where she sees a virtual reality.
Méandre / Meander, movie (2020)
image © Full Time Studio & Cinéfrance Studios & Equitime & WTFilms
The aliens
The aliens abduct humans.
They test their physical abilities, mental endurance, and they have to solve an easy intelligence test to get out.
The aliens can change the sensory perceptions of humans. They can read the memories of humans, even childhood memories, long forgotten by the person.
The girl at the end suggests that the body of the woman died several times, so it's possible that they really put them through the test, and if the test subjects died, they just resurrected them.
The aliens can easily stitch human wounds, regrow appendages. They can plant memories into humans, but that might require physical connection through the tube.
The aliens are not above torturing their test subjects mentally and physically.
If the test subjects perform well, they get some rewards - for the woman, it was her childhood memories first, then the vision of her deceased girl at the end.
They created a habitat for humans on an alien planet, that looks like the savannas of Africa. It's probably some kind of zoo.
Is it a virtual reality? Although the aliens are capable of creating a virtual reality by affecting the sensory perceptions, but then they wouldn't need to simulate that feeding hole on the stomach of the woman. So I assume, what we saw, was real.
The tests
They strap a device that gives light, and shows how close the danger is. Then they give clues that can only be found if you remove the device. Putting it in acid disolved it, but I assume the cutters can be also used for that purpose. The clue is different for every test subject.
There are parts, where:
- you have to crawl on all fours
- reach the target place in time (otherwise something dangerous occurs - crushing walls, fire, rotating blade)
- go uphill
- go on your back
- time your movement to jump between cutting blades
- with only a small ledge to put your hands an feet on
- over a dangerous substance (acid)
- you have to push through
- squeeze in a very narrow space
- that's inflicting wounds (barbed wire)
- squeeze in a very narrow space
- you have to swim
- under the water
- you have to endure a flooding waterfall
- you have to choose between two tunnels (with the clue hidden under the device)
- go through something disgusting (rotting body, walls made of flesh)
When the subject seems to give up:
- indicate that there's someone else there - giving hope
- put something dangerous behind them (fire, monsters) - giving urgency
- indicate that the exit is near - giving hope
The message of the story
I'm not sure there's one. "Humans take more risks if they think their goal is close." "Humans can gather extra strength if they think it will further their goals."
The structure of the story
The scenes of the Meander film are mostly played in sequence, following the same storyline. There's a blackout after the beginning, that is played later for the protagonist, acting like a flashback. We also see projections of the protagonist's memories.
The woman is the single viewpoint character.
It has the usual arc of the dramatic structure - introduction, action, resolution.
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Things I liked
- The medical robot looks cool.
- I liked the idea of the memory chamber.
- It was nice to change the setting from high-tech to biological.
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How does it compare to the other works of the creators?
I think I haven't seen any other works of the writer / director (Mathieu Turi), but now I'm interested.
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Méandre / Meander, movie (2020)
image © Full Time Studio & Cinéfrance Studios & Equitime & WTFilms
Analysis of the story - Meander, movie (2020)
I mostly liked the story, I didn't find problems that would have prevented me from enjoying Meander.
Problematic elements
Missing tension: The main problem with the story is that there is practically no tension. We just watch things happen.
- Unlikeable protagonist: We don't really get to know the woman, so we only care about her, because she is the only one on the screen. What we see about her in the beginning is that she is a mother broken by the dead of her daughter, who probably wanted to commit suicide. This doesn't make the audience root for her.
- Lone protagonist: The woman is alone. This means the audience knows that nothing bad will happen to her, even if she might get physically hurt. And if she gets hurt, we know that she'll still be able to run and fight if the plot needs it. Even when finally another character shows up, that character straight up attacks her, so we won't care about the well-being of the other character, and we know that he won't be able to hurt the woman. So, basically, that character might be cut out of the film, and nothing would change.
- No stakes: The woman has no stakes in the situation. There's no urgency. There's no promised reward, or threat to her if she doesn't finish the maze in time. There's an implicated deadline, shown on her device, but we get no idea what would happen if time would run out.
- Caring researchers: We see that the aliens do everything they can so the woman won't really gets hurt. They even patch her up when required. This really takes even that low tension out of the tests. After we see it that they would rather open the floor than to let her get fried, even that little tension what remains, goes away. It's cute that the aliens are nice, but it doesn't make a good story.
Easy to give up: After about 15 minutes of the test, she is about to give it up. I get it that this is required for the audience to hear, but it would be more believable, if it took hours for her to reach that point. We should see her going through long stretches of these tests, with some cuts, indicating it took her time to reach the end points.
Writing the clues on the wall: Why does she do that? According to WikiPedia, she did it so the next victim would start with this clue, but if this was the intention of the creators, they could have indicated this a little better.
Directions: She comes up with the idea of directions a little too quickly.
Checking her marks: Why did she think that her marks will differ from the marks of the guy?
Unanswered questions
- What do the aliens want with their test subjects?
- How long was Adam there?
- Is Adam alive at the end?
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Possibilities of improvement
- Add dialogue to Adam at the beginning, that he's a night guard at some research facility, to make it more likely that it him who took the girl to the facilty.
- Instead of a regular killer, the police should search for someone who abducts people. It would make it more likely that he puts her through tests, instead of just killing her.
How it could have been better?
Let there be multiple test subjects. That way we can root for multiple characters, and they can be endangered, even killed during the story. The more likeable or at least relatable these characters are, the better.
There should be antagonistic aliens. They shouldn't care for the well-being of their test subjects. They could even take pleasure in it, if they find that they could create emotional reactions - for example, by getting them to crawl through disgusting things.
There should be some time limit, or other stakes to go for.
For example, they let the test subjects go free if they complete the test course. The woman was abducted while having a trip at a remote location with her daughter. The longer she is in the test tunnels, the less chance is there that her daughter will stay alive.
Or there could be a contest among the test subjects, and only the best two or three will get to the zoo, and get their wishes come true. They could promise the woman that they will create a replica of her daughter, or create a sensory vision of her to live together. In this version, the contestants don't all need to be likeable, there could be some people with despecable wishes. For example, Adam could ask for the woman to be his mindless slave, forever healed after he maims and kills her. That way, the audience could root for the woman, and they would hope that Adam won't win.
Let there be more revealing tests. This would be a good opportunity to show the basic instincts of humans. Disgust, desire, fear. But most of the tests revolved around physical obstacles. It could have been a lot more interesting if even the audience would had to think how would they react in a situation like that.
Truth to be told, I like the basic idea of the story with a single protagonist, so there need not be others, but then do something that we'd care about and root for that character.
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Behind the scenes
Thoughts about the reviews of others
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Méandre / Meander, movie (2020)
image © Full Time Studio & Cinéfrance Studios & Equitime & WTFilms
Uses for the film - Meander, movie (2020)
Plot
- There are researchers doing experiments on the mental and physical endurance human test subjects.
- People are abducted, and experimented on against their will.
- Aliens take humans, to put them in their alien zoo.
Scenes
- The tunnel scenes could be used as footage found in a research facility of some antagonist mastermind, who tortures test subjects like lab rats.
Scenario ideas - Role-playing game scenario ideas
- One of the friends of the team goes missing. When they find the last place he went, they are abducted by the same people who got their friend. If they are able to pass a series of obstacles, they are promised to find their friend.
- The characters breach the HQ of an evil mastermind. They find it out that he had experimented on abducted people, putting them through mental and physical obstacles in a maze. As they can't find the controls, or don't have access to it, in order to save the people still trapped in the maze, they have to go through the whole thing.
Scenario ideas - Wargame scenario ideas
Danger zone: The playing area is a strange place (ancient magical conduit, crashed spaceship, fields of chaos), where every zone has a unique danger. Create a list of dangers. After you set up the playing area, allocate the dangerous elements randomly around the playing area. This is probably best done by an additional neutral person, so all of the players would be surprised. At the beginning of every turn, roll a d6 for all of the areas. On a roll of 1, it activates, and at the end of the turn, the effect will impact the area.
Tunnels: The playing area is a maze of tunnels. Some parts are so narrow, that models have to push through it. The tunnels hinder the use of long weapons, they get -1 on close combat rolls. There's also a -1 penalty on ranged weapons that are not crossbows or firearms.
Resurrection fields: The playing area has strange properties. Whenever a model dies without being outright destroyed, place it on its side. At the beginning of the next turn it will turn into a mindless zombie, that's controlled by the system. It attacks the closest living model, or moves toward it. While the dead model lies, any successful close combat roll destroys it, taking it out of the game. Regular ranged attacks only destroy it on a d6 roll of 1. Ranged attacks that destroy models with a successful hit also destroy the zombie.
Spawn points: There are traps around the playing area. When you set up the playing area, designate some spawn points at the edges. Then designate some areas that are traps. The forces enter the game on the spawn points. When a model enters the trapped area, they have to either roll some skill-based test if the system has that, or just roll a d6, and on a roll of 1-3, they avoid the trap, otherwise they get transported (teleported, sliding down) to a spawn point, arriving at the beginning of the next turn.
- The model is transported to the spawn point where it started the game.
- You have to link every trap to a spawn point. The model goes to that spawn point.
- Every spawn point has a number. Roll a dice to determine where will the model arrive.
- Instead of instant arrival, it might take time to reach the spawn point. Put the removed model near the spawn point. At the beginning of every turn, roll a d6. On a roll of 1, the model enters the playing area.
Murder maze: Set up the playing area with many corridors, a couple of traps, and a couple of switches. Set up a starting area for every playing force. Set up a target area, far away from the starting areas. Deploys the player models. A model that touches a switch is able to activate one of trap areas. If there are models in the trap area, they all get hit by the trap. The winner is the force that get more than half of their models into the target area first. In order to make the game more interesting, you can also use the Tunnels, Spawn point, or Danger zone options.
Miniatures - 1/50-1/60 (28-32mm scale)
Test subjects: Human-sized futuristic civilian in jumpsuit.
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Similar stories - Meander, movie (2020)
Short stories
I remember a short story where the protagonist wakes up in a closed, coffin-like room, that's being used to store the old people, but he breaks out, and has to crawl through narrow tunnels.
Movies
Circle (2015): People wake up in a place (in a room, after being abducted). They are forced to do disturbing things (choosing to eliminate others) to get free. It's probably a more emotional movie than Meander, and there are more heavy messages, but it's less action-oriented.
Cube series (1997, 2002, 2004, 2021): People wake up in a place (in a room, after being abducted). They are forced to go through dangerous obstacles to get free. in Meander, the alien nature of the structure makes the story more plausible.
Oxygène / Oxygen (2021): A woman wakes up in a place (in a high-tech capsule). She doesn't remember who she is, and how she got here. She tries to get free. Meander was probably more interesting, and more logical.
Pandorum (2009): A man wakes up in a place (cryogenic pod on an interstellar journey, due to malfunction). He doesn't remember who he is, and how he got here. He has to go through dangerous obstacles to get free.
Predators (2010): People wake up in a place (in a room, after being abducted). They are forced to go through dangerous obstacles (while being hunted) to get free.
Saw series (2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2017): People wake up in a place (in a room, after being abducted). They are forced to go through dangerous obstacles, or do disturbing things to get free. in Meander, the alien nature of the structure makes the story more plausible.
TV series & episodes
The Twilight Zone Ep79: Five Characters in Search of an Exit (1961): People wake up in a place (in a cylindrical container, with no exit). They try to find a way to leave the place.
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Frequently asked questions - Meander, movie (2020)
Will the Meander movie be available with English audio dub?
Yes, although Meander is a French movie, there's already an English audio dub.
Is the Meander film based on a book or comics?
No, Meander is not based on either books or comics.
Is the Meander film a remake or reboot?
No, the Meander film is neither a remake nor a reboot.
Is there a post credit scene in Meander? Does Meander have end credit scenes?
No, there's no post credit scene in Meander.
Is Meander connected with Cube series?
Nope, Meander has nothing to do with the Cube movies, except for the incredibly similar plot.
Where can I see Meander? Where can I watch Meander online? Is Meander available on Netflix? Is Meander on Amazon?
As of 2021.11.30, Meander is on Amazon Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Rakuten TV, YouTube.
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Resources - Meander, movie (2020)
Official
Full Time Studio: Méandre (in French): Official article.
Information
IMDB: Meander (2020): Database article.
WikiPedia: Meander (film): Database article.
Letterboxd: Meander 2020: Database article.
Rotten Tomatoes: Meander 2020: Database article.
Creation
: Concept art article.¤
Reviews with no spoilers - Meander film (2020)
David Bjerre (for The Single-Minded Movie Blog): Quick Take: Meander (2020): Review video about the Meander film with no spoilers.¤
Reviews with spoilers - Meander film (2020)
: Review article of the Meander movie, with spoilers. Includes a very detailed plot summary.¤
Analysis - Meander movie (2020)
: Analysis video, explaining the finale of Meander.¤
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Buying the product - Meander, movie (2020)
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Have you seen the Meander film? How do you like the movie? Would you recommend it to others? Do you know reviews or resources you'd like to add? What further thoughts do you have about it? Tell your opinion in the comments!
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