The Shock Labyrinth

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.

Not a slasher or a tension edge of your seat horror movie but it makes up for it with above average 3d and a decent but confusing story. The filming was excellent and I watched it with dubbed english so hard to judge the actors. But a few jump scares some creepy characters and overall entertaining movie. glad I purchased the 3d bluray , unlike a LOT of horrible German 3d horror movies I shouldn't have purchased.

Complete utter disaster of a film. Nothing works: 3D effects are terrible and gimmicky, the plot is all over the place (above all, boring), and the adult actors seem to be sleep walking through the entire movie. I wish Takashi had stuck with the children and the far more compelling story. After establishing the basic premise of the story, it gets stuck in a pattern of repeating the same things over and over again with a twist here and there until the finale. There were just too many actors and not enough story to make it feature length film. The "horror" scenes are either unintentionally humorous or just boring. Ironically for a director known to build tension and atmosphere in his movies, the creepiness of the famous haunted hospital is completely lost.

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.

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.