Mazes and Monsters - Plot

Plot

The movie opens with a scene that is repeated later in the film in which a reporter meets with police searching a cavern. He is told a Mazes and Monsters game got out of hand.

Robbie Wheeling (Hanks) starts college at the fictional Grant University and soon develops a group of friends, all of whom have their own personal problems and issues. JayJay (Makepeace) feels marginalized by his mother who constantly redecorates his room, Kate (Crewson) has had a series of failed relationships, Daniel's (Wallace) parents reject his dream of becoming a video game designer, and Robbie's alcoholic mother and strict father fight constantly and he is still tormented by the mysterious disappearance of his brother Hall. They are fans of a game called Mazes and Monsters, a fantasy roleplaying game that had previously caused Robbie to flunk out of his last school when he became too obsessed with it. Though he is reluctant, the other three students convince him to start playing again with them.

Through the course of playing the game, Robbie and Kate begin a serious relationship, in which he confides in her that he still has nightmares about his missing brother. Eventually, JayJay, upset by feeling left out by his friends, decides to commit suicide in a local cavern. In the process of planning it out, he changes his mind and decides the cavern would be better suited to a new Mazes and Monsters campaign. He dramatically kills off his character to force them to start a new campaign, in which he describes they will be living out their fantasy.

During the actual spelunking, Robbie experiences a psychotic episode, where he hallucinates that he has slain a monster, called a Gorvil. From this point forward, Robbie believes he is actually his character, the cleric Pardieu. This leads him to break off his relationship with Kate (to maintain celibacy), and to start drawing maps that will lead him to a sacred person he has seen in his dreams called the Great Hall. In his dream, the Great Hall tells him to go to the Two Towers, which is in fact the World Trade Center, and he believes that by jumping off of them and casting a spell, he will finally join the Great Hall. His friends have reported him to the police while concealing their trip into the caverns, and eventually deduce his location in New York and stop him from jumping.

The movie ends with the friends visiting Robbie at his parents' estate. Though he is now in regular counseling, it is implied that Robbie will live out the rest of his life trapped in his imaginary world believing that he is still Pardieu, that his friends are really their characters, and that he is living at an inn (actually his parents' home) and paying for his boarding with a magic coin, which "magically" reappears on his bedside table each morning. The other three friends engage him one last time in a "game" of Mazes and Monsters, letting Robbie dictate the events to them.