The Labyrinth

I stumbled upon the 2021 South Korean horror movie "The Labyrinth" by random chance here late in 2022. And given my fascination with the Asian cinema in general and horror movies, of course I opted to sit down to watch "The Labyrinth" without ever having heard about it.

Writers Ha Kyung-Jin and Jeon Seong-Soo had every opportunity to impress and entertain me with this movie, but I have to say that the script they mustered to churn out for director Song Woon to bring to the screen was a highly erratic and confusing one. It felt like the script was written without any sense of coherency and it was just lacking a red thread throughout the 90 minutes that the ordeal lasted for.

It should be noted that the acting performances in "The Labyrinth" were fair enough, taking into consideration the severe restrictions imposed upon the actresses and actors by a lack of proper script, storyline or character gallery.

"The Labyrinth" was by no means a great horror experience, nor was it a particularly good movie, much less an enjoyable one. So if you enjoy South Korean horror movies, like I do, then do yourself a favor and don't waste 90 minutes of your time on this movie. It just simply isn't worth it.

The majority of whatever constituted horror in "The Labyrinth" was cheap jump scares that bombarded the audience. Most of which just was there to get a reaction out of the audience, and once the jump scare had been spent in whatever scent it was in, then the movie usually cut to a whole other scene right away. That means that you don't get to see the result of whatever purpose the jump scares were utilized for in the first place. Not a great move there by director Song Woon.

My rating of "The Labyrinth" lands on a three out of ten stars.

Paranormal activity? No pun intended, but one thing is for sure: this is not your run of the mill school. And when it get dark ... and traps are being manipulated (or rather broken/destroyed/shut off) ... well things happen. Things that are mostly CGI (not excellent but not too bad either - at least in my humble opinion).

That all being said, we get a lot of tropes here. And you will either go with the flow or be a bit annoyed by some of the things thrown at you. Or how characters react to things happening around them. A lot of scares and all that stuff - but not too well done. Feels like things are ... well conjured up as they go along - no pun intended. Worse movies have been made, but you don't have to watch this ... especially if you are not a fan of Korean horror movies or horror movies in general.