"Shock Labyrinth" really only has it's boffo title and packaging going for it. Everything else about the movie fails to deliver.The plot...well, apparently a group of friends visit a spooky fairground attraction as children and there is some kind of accident in which one of the girls vanishes. Then, 10 or so years later the same friends find themselves tricked into going to an abandoned hospital, which then turns into the same funhouse from their past, and they re-live the frightening experience all over again, possibly as part of the twisted revenge of the missing/dead girl.That might have worked as a plot, in fact on paper it looks pretty good, but watching this movie is absolutely no fun at all. There is but a single key event in the movie, which is that somebody falls over the handrail and down the well of a spiral staircase. Believe it or not, the whole film is constructed to dwell on this one event in as many ways as it is possible. First we see the original accident, then we see it again from another view, then we see other characters go through the same event either as witnesses or as victims themselves, sometimes in their childhood and sometimes in their adult states. The film thinks it's clever in mixing the evens of the past with the present, but it doesn't hold any suspense whatsoever, it just looks like a bunch of kids running in circles and then a bunch of adults running in circles again. The so-called shocks of the labyrinth are provided by (wait for it) a white toy bunny and a yellow balloon with a smiling bumble bee on it. Shots of the bunny in particular are wheeled out interminably, not that a single shot of it provokes any feelings of fear whatsoever. At no point in the film does anything approaching scary happen. Not in one single minute of it, and therefore I count "Shock Labyrinth" as a total failure to entertain.By the way, you might pick up the DVD that comes with both 3D and 2D versions, but if you think the 3D will rescue it, think again. It's totally unwatchable, I only lasted about 1.5 minutes before yanking off the 3D specs and sticking the 2D version on.What a shame.

"Shock Labyrinth 3D" revolves around a group of childhood friends who share a tragic and dark secret. Their friend Yuki went missing 10 years earlier in a haunted house attraction they snuck into. One night, the lost child shows up as an adult at her friends' front door, frightened and still dressed the same way she was when she disappeared. The group decide to take her to the hospital and upon arriving discover they are locked in the abandoned building with something or someone sinister playing with their minds. Shimizu has a way with pulling you into his films and getting you emotionally involved. He takes you through all sorts of different emotions, from fear to sadness to empathy all in a 90 minute time period. His work goes so much deeper than what American viewers have seen with his "The Grudge" movies. Fans of intelligent horror films will love the "Shock Labyrinth 3D." The movie is an atmospheric and claustrophobic journey through the darkest parts of a person's mind. The fact that it was shot in the actual "Shock Labyrinth" haunted house attraction in Japan helps with the distinctive character of the film.

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.

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.