The Shock Labyrinth: Extreme 3D

A bizarre J-"horror" from the one-time golden boy of the genre Takashi Shimizu -- and oh, how the mighty have fallen. His stint in Hollywood helming Sarah Michelle Gellar movies has either sapped his abilities or his mind. Shock Labyrinth feels like a re-tread of the circular storytelling of the original Ju-On films, but with much worse acting, much less gore, and a poor-quality, murky 3D effect shrouding everything in a thick fog. Plot is deliberately dream-like (read: confusing), some kids re-visit a haunted house fairground attraction where "something horrible" happened to them years ago, only for the weirdness to get kick-started again. Put it this way, if you're scared of plush rabbit toys, this is the horror film for you. Everyone else, stay away.

I gave it a chance and watched it twice just to see if I had missed some creative writing, directing, acting, props - anything. Even the actor interviews when asked what the movie meant the most frequent answer, "What ever you make of it." The usual plot device of making the viewer question whether what was being seen was taking place or was just in the mind of our central character just didn't fly. Just a not well thought out mess.

Some examples: 1. The long opening and closing scenes of a forest did not fit with anything in the movie which was centered about an amusement park and hospital. The focal structure in the film, a spiral staircase, seemed like an oddly out of place prop for either location. 2. The visuals of falling feathers and rising/falling bubbles contributed nothing. 3. The floating rabbit backpack, both as a physical form and as a go through walls form, was just meaningless effects. 4. The comatose girl who is presented as supposedly an avenging spirit, she's hooked up to various hospital monitors which if move would set off an alarm, is shown with dirty feet as if she was out in the world avenging. Yet, on one occasion shows up at a person's apartment. 5. The intermingling of the two time periods were at times actual physical events and at times visual or hallucinatory. Not consistent. 6. The police interviews which were intermittently injected to provide some cohesion and clarity, did neither.

3.5 stars for this above average supernatural thriller. While the story is not wholly original - it's an example of the Revenge For Past Mistakes sub-genre of horror flicks - the movie nonetheless has interesting and sometimes creepy visuals, and a story line which unfolds in a way that is more interesting than many other films in this genre. The acting is also reasonably good, and while some scenes are a bit maudlin in the manner we often see in Asian horror flicks, it does not ever become overbearingly so. It moves at an unnecessarily slow pace, with some redundant scenes in which no new new info is revealed, and in which the thrills or creeps are the same as previous scenes; but the movie never bogs down entirely. Very much worth a look for fans of J-horror or Asian horror in general, even if it's not on the same level as the classics from that region.

I never worry too much about the scores movies achieve as if something fits into your preferred niche or genre you will enjoy it more than an aggregated score will suggest. Therefore a Japanese horror from the guy who made the grudge which people are saying may be a bit weird and confusing ticked a lot of boxes for me regardless of its 4.

Unfortunately 4 is a fair score, the story had real potential, I am not an expert on Japanese culture but it felt true to the kind of supernatural movies we get to see. Movies are either more or less than the sum of its parts therefore it didn't necessarily matter that the movie looked like it was made for TV, the acting was poor (the guy I watched it with thought the lead actor was the worst he had ever seen)! The effects were cheap and sure there were plot holes. I see movies for the emotional impact so can forgive pretty much everything, I don't always understand David Lynch movies but they are beautiful dreamy experiences.

So having said that I bring it all down to how I felt about the experience and it was boring, there was no tension or atmosphere. I've seen movies where I didn't care about the characters but this was different, I've enjoyed bad movies but I wasn't sure how I could get through the 85 minute run time. It really is that bad. The story could have been interesting but other than that there were was nothing to redeem this movie.

I have only hated 2 movies in my life, this isn't one of them but its probably the movie I have found the most impossible to engage with.

We're at a time with the rest of the world catching up with Hollywood in offering 3D content, since an explosion of screens with the right infrastructure put in place, and the marketing machinery already being rather successful in convincing audiences to accept having to put on an extra pair of plastic glasses, and to pay more to do so, means more money to be made in putting out a 3D film, whether shot with the right type of cameras, or done so doing post- production. The Shock Labyrinth, as the marketing language puts it, is touted as J-Horror's first live action 3D offering, and don't let the cheesy looking trailer fool you, it's actually much better than the teaser made it out to be.

Directed by Takashi Shimizu who was responsible for the original Ju On films as well as the American adaptation The Grudge, one wonders if he had preferred to stay within his comfort zone in yet having to craft a story with children and water, and a tale of revenge even, where a group of childhood friends gets an unexpected visit by one of their own 10 years after her mysterious disappearance. Things get stranger when it is learnt that she had presumably died, and as such, just who is this Yuki (Misako Renbutsu) who turned up. Even stranger is that the group of Ken (Yuya Yagira), Mikoto (Ryo Katsuji), Rin (Ai Maeda) the blind girl and Yuki's sister (Erina Mizuno) all seem to head back without a single recollection toward the scene of their misdemeanour, a house of horrors within the Fuji Q Highland theme park which is fit out to resemble a hospital.

The narrative is a strange brew of reality and fantasy, with even a time warp of sorts get thrown in, complete with the paradox of time travel, which makes it seem a little bit implausible for the non-linear narrative to hold water, other than to suggest that memories can be faulty, especially a collective one from some 10 years ago. The constant flash forwards and flash backs do make it a jarring experience, and forces you to work hard at piecing the fractured stories together, which didn't help when you allow the paradoxes to set in, or have the visuals interfere with solving the mystery of what exactly happened during that fateful day when the children decide to head off on their own to the labyrinth.

But to give credit where it is due, the story does try to add some depth to its characters as we navigate through their individual guilt trips of their involvement pertaining to Yuki's mystery, and even found some time to thrown in some romance into the mix, which on one hand may seem unnecessary, but provided a contribution to motivation on why things do go bump in the night. It examines that collective repressed memories that we tend to bury deep within our subconscious, and what more when this is shared amongst a group who wants to best forget what they're all directly and indirectly responsible for, becoming in turn the victims of their guilt and recipients of their just desserts which the resident spook of the film piles on.

And it is the execution of Yuki's revenge that exploited the best of its atmosphere within the confines of a house of horrors (strangely the title here) that comes complete with porcelain mannequins with grotesque features. The film possesses an incredible depth of field as well to bring out the best of its 3D, while not overdoing its attempts in throwing everything toward the screen, opting to instead take it really slow, like a hand reaching out slowly to grasp something. The character Rin also provided some opportunity to mimic the radar prowess of Daredevil's, which I thought was strange since she could actually see, and probably provided actress Ai Maeda some reprieve from trying to act blind all the time.

Most of the surprises and inevitable twists happen in the final half hour of the film, and while probably not reaching the standards set by the best in J-horror, The Shock Labyrinth certainly does have its moments, other than what you see from the trailer that contained relatively raw looking special effects, and with its numerous bunny scenes made it look rather fluff in treatment.