Labyrinth

A Load Of Trap

Labyrinth
Directed by Ryühei Kitamura
USA 2025
Screened on 29th August at FrightFest

Warning: This one has spoilers.

Okay then... so Labyrinth was my fourth and final pick from this year’s FrightFest and I chose this one because I figured it would be a gory and violent film and, it’s been a long time since I saw one of those dumb, mindless, bloodletting movies. I thought it would make a nice change from the ghost stories and high concept films I’d been watching during the rest of the festival. 

Alas, Labyrinth just reminded me of why I tend not to gravitate to these kinds of films in the first place. It kinda uses the same style of plot as the Saw films (of which I only saw the first when it came out in the cinema... although I am assawed these are actually worth a look for my blog sometime) and just gives it a slightly different method behind the madness, so to speak.

So, we have a bunch of people who we all see abducted by... I’ll call them ‘angels of death’... in an extended sequence leading up to the title card. The abducted are played by Mekhi Phifer, Alexxis Lemire, Shane West, Chris Klein, Ami Park and David Sakurai. I think that’s all of them. Anyway, they are brought to a series of rooms and corridors by a character who is, presumably, supposed to be Satan, played by Tommy Flanagan... who seems to be attempting to channel Christopher Lee a tad. And they all have to survive a series of death traps to atone for their sins.

And I’m sorry to say... it all leads up to an ending which the audience will most likely see coming. I won’t give it away here but most people will get there long before the last sequence of the movie.

Now... it’s well acted and, it is hyper gory in terms of bloody carnage... although I was hoping/expecting the goriness to be a little more innovative or pushed beyond the norm for a movie which, more or less, exists just for these kinds of bloody set pieces. It can get quite intense in places too... such as the Russian Roulette scene. And the actors are all pretty good although, honestly, if you want the audience on your side you should probably not have killed off the most charismatic personality in the cast first. 

As the film plays out, it becomes clear that the various characters have all done something bad in their past and it’s the reason why they have ended up in a labyrinth of traps. But, again, you are kind of expecting that too.

I mean, it’s a well shot production but, honestly, as I’m writing these words and realising this is going to be a really short review, I can’t think of too much more to say about the film, either good or bad. There was a lot of laughter coming at me from the right hand side of the auditorium whenever one of the specific actors opened his mouth and said something but, I can only assume that’s because some of the crew or maybe his mates were all sitting in the audience too. It’s not as though he was saying anything funny. And some people were definitely getting freaked out a little (a girl sitting next to me was having a hard time with some of the scenes) with some of the gore... although, apart from a scene where the actor I mentioned above has to cut out his vocal cords with some scissors, there’s nothing new on show here... the usual decapitations, head to toe body splittings, crucifixions etc. If you’ve seen one horror trap movie you’ve seen them all is what I was thinking about these kinds of movies as I watched... but then I remembered the brilliance of such movies as the original Cube and then think, no, it can be done well.

Sadly, for my money at least, Labyrinth is not a movie that does this particularly well. It certainly does it competently and it looks very professional... there’s just not anything innovative in terms of the story content for me and, yeah, you really will see that ending coming from a mile off. Not one I’ll visit again, for sure.