Film: Shock Labyrinth 3D
Release date: 31st January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 93 mins
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Starring: Yûya Yagira, Ai Maeda, Suzuki Matsuo, Ryo Katsuji, Shôichirô Masumoto
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Studio: Chelsea
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Best known for his Ju-on/The Grudge series, Japanese director Takashi Shimizu returns with Shock Labyrinth 3D, a 2009 supernatural horror in which a group of teenagers find themselves unwittingly revisiting an amusement park’s hospital-themed house of horrors where one of their friends disappeared in mysterious circumstances ten years earlier. The film is released as a two disc special edition, with a 3D version (two pairs of old school 3D glasses provided) on one disc and a standard 2D version on the other.
When Mikoto (Ryo Katsuji) returns to his hometown in the company of old friend Ken (Yuya Yagira), he is in for an unexpected, not altogether pleasant surprise. Arriving at the home of their blind friend Rin (Ai Maeda), Mikoto and Ken are greeted by the strange presence of a disturbed young woman who claims to be Yuki (Misako Renbutso), a former friend who disappeared many years earlier after the group broke into an amusement park’s house of horrors.
Unsure of what to make of Yuki’s apparent reappearance and strange behaviour, Mikoto, Ken and Rin decide to take her back to her old home, but once there, Yuki falls down a flight of stairs and has to be rushed to hospital. Together with Yuki’s younger sister Miyu (Erina Mizuno), the friends drive Yuki to a hospital, but find themselves at a place where their health and safety is placed under serious threat; a place where rubbish food and surly nurses are the furthest things from their minds.
At the hospital, Yuki soon disappears again, and as the hapless friends wander through the eerily deserted building, they begin to realise that they have somehow been lured back to the hospital of horrors they had all tried to forget…
Largely filmed on location at a haunted hospital attraction in Japan’s Fuji-Q High Land amusement park, Shock Labyrinth is a strangely unsatisfying beast; a horror without any real scares, but with plenty of atmosphere and a smattering of vaguely surreal sights to prevent it from being a complete disaster.
The plot is a bit of a mess, to put it mildly; a blur of flashbacks and muddled narrative strands that never really add up to anything substantial. There are suggestions that past and present are intertwined, and that actions in the present are somehow inextricably linked with what happened in the past, but this potentially intriguing plot device is never really explored with any conviction. It’s one thing to keep viewers guessing, but in Shock Labyrinth, there is a sense that ideas have been floated, but not followed through on.
In the final few minutes, there is an attempted explanation of events that have unfolded and what caused them, but it seems tacked on and not particularly convincing. The mannered, over-expressive acting doesn’t help matters either, although in the case of Misako Renbutso’s vengeful Yuki, it is at least in keeping with her character, thinly sketched as it is.
As an audiovisual spectacle, Shock Labyrinth is more successful, though the 3D version is virtually unwatchable, unless you enjoy giving yourself migraines. Best stick to the 2D version, where gently falling feathers and a hovering bunny backpack floating through space, and walls, make for visually engaging, rather than eye-wateringly irritating viewing.
Director Shimizu also makes fairly effective use of the film’s setting; a less than hospitable hospital populated by creepy mannequins, with plenty of long, dimly lit corridors and stairwells for the cast to trudge nervously through. In the absence of a coherent plot or dialogue that rises above the mundane, however, the visuals are left to do all the work.
Vengeance is a powerful theme in the right hands, but Shimizu has failed to deliver with Shock Labyrinth. Attempts have been made to show why Yuki has a right to be unhappy with her friends and younger sister, but most of the punishments seem to be ridiculously out of proportion with the crimes. Perhaps that wouldn’t matter so much if the film was more coherently structured, or if there was some indication of Yuki gaining some sense of closure, but Shock Labyrinth fails on both counts.
Shimizu seems to be aiming for a younger, teenage audience with Shock Labyrinth, so the absence of gore is excusable, but even so a horror has to have more tension than is evident here to succeed. In short, there are no real shocks, and it’s more of a dead end than a labyrinth.
Takashi Shimizu fans may well be disappointed by Shock Labyrinth, and even the impressive cinematography is let down by a 3D version that will have most viewers lunging dizzily for the eject button. JG
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