L'homme du labyrinthe

A kidnapped girl is found 15 years after her abduction. A celebrated psychiatrist is trying to deal with her trauma and a retired detective who only has hours to live is ready to put it all on the line to find a vicious killer. Will he be able to succeed? And who is the real villain?

Donato Carrisi adapts his rather complex and at times convoluted plot to a film that makes surprising sense. That alone is an achievement. This is chronologically the third book in the series which makes it a particularly difficult adaptation. The good news - it works out well.

Writers rarely makes good directors. Carrisi is an exception. Choosing carefully his colour pallet he nods to the "giallo" sub-genre of the 80s and draws inspiration from the likes of Dario Argento (Suspiria). The whole movie feels like a dream-like sequence, although it is more procedural crime fiction than anything else.

What makes the movie feel focused is its great performances. Dustin Hoffman as Dr Green who is trying to get into the mind of a beautiful victim and Toni Servillo (THE GREAT BEAUTY) as a dying detective who has made it his life goal to catch the killer, carry the film on their shoulders. The story has an episodic structure and echoes heavily the SAW franchise, although, I am sure, Carrisi would be devastated to hear of the comparison. What he has been trying to create with his books (and films) is a serial killer cinematic universe. INTO THE LABYRINTH may not be the best start, but it definitely has the potential to becoming a mystery to remember.

This movie is a bit underrated at 5.6 stars at this moment. The acting is very good from top to bottom. As others have noted it's also an entertaining callback to 70s Italian giallo cinema, both in terms of the lurid, convoluted plot and the self-consciously stylized, artistic visual design.

Similar to some of those classic '70s flicks, at the end of the day the plot within a plot, story within a story of this movie doesn't make complete sense. If you examine it with cold-hearted logic logic you'd have to apply some significant contortions to fill the plot holes and get it to all work out. But also at the end of the day I'm not sure this lack of complete internal logic can really be seen as a flaw since it is a pretty traditional, even defining, feature of this kind of movie.

Bottom line, this is an entertaining movie filled with good acting, a beautiful to look at visual style, consistent suspense, and a pervasive sense of mystery.

The good: great actors, beautifully photographed, nice music score, intrigueing start of the story.

The bad: this movie is somehow lacking in spark and punch. The stories plot isnt very original either, bit of a bummer actually. It is part Italian spoken, part english spoken.

I think this movie is best suited for an arhouse audience, which has got the patience for longstretched scenes with only dialogue. It is definitely not a bad movie, but somehow I am missing the excitement that I usually get when watching a movie about kidnapping.

Whether you can figure out where the movie will lead you or whether the split narrative excites you enormously ... well that will be up to you. The movie has great actors for sure - and there are hints I reckon that are telling you where it goes. Because you may second guess certain things, but the movie also hints if you are right about that - or your suspicions in general.

The structure is well thought of, but it also leaves certain things on the floor. No pun intended ... there is a lot of mystery and I feel the movie had way more potential that it actually was able to dig out and really explore. Even so, it is well told it is more than a decent thriller and it is "fun" to watch.

I am not usually leaving reviews here but i honestly think that this movie is underrated. It kept me excited for the full 2 hours, something that nowadays hardly a movie manages.