Review: The Labyrinth (2021)

The Labyrinth appeared to me with the description, “It's love at first sight for new students Heemin and Soyoung, who find themselves locked in their school overnight with a host of bedeviled souls,” and it conjured a mental image that was nothing short of enticing. Starring SF9’s Chani, I was ready to see some of the rumored acting chops I’d heard only tell of—and in a paranormal high school romance setting! What I got upon starting it, however, was nothing short of tedious.

The movie begins with character intros in a style that lends itself early on to being a plot perhaps better suited to a web drama. Among these is the successor of Korea’s best exorcist, Heemin (Chani), who’s yet unaware of his own abilities, cheerfully entering the breeding ground of bad energy by the malevolent spirits who’ve taken up residency in his new school. The exorcism school. They’re all exorcists, I guess.

While introducing himself to his class, certified pretty girl Soyoung (Park Yuna) enters late, and draws Heemin’s attention like a lighthouse in the mist and she couldn’t care less. Meanwhile, we’re introduced to the bunch of characters we’ll be following for the evening: a group of popular, mean kids, some girls they’re bullying, and the school’s principal who’s setting up traps for a banger of an exorcism  to cleanse the place once and for all, but she’s thwarted by all these freaking kids who want to hang out at school after hours for some reason.

The Labyrinth, based on the video game White Day: A Labyrinth Named School, details the events of this fright night, wherein the group of bullies hangs out at the school to drink, the girls show up by invitation to show they’re not afraid, and Heemin comes to return Soyoung’s found diary. One after another, the night unfolds, but it watches kind of like a collage of perilous moments and clips of Chani walking around, looking at stuff with wide eyes. It’s a Scooby-Doo sequence of him and his classmates being terrorized by ghosts, but much slower, and even worse are the visual effects.

I try to keep a pretty open mind, especially when it comes to budgeting restraints and the general toiling of animation. Sometimes you have to suspend reality in order to enjoy something that may not have the technological library of Disney—if you’re watching a puppet show and looking at the wires, you’re ignoring the story. That being said, there are CGI ghost attacks, janitors with blacked-out demon eyes, and specters getting blasted to smithereens and all of it is, regrettably, laughable. There’s having a low budget, and then there’s not having a care in the world, and The Labyrinth errs on the side of the latter, it seems. Most notably, there’s a scene where it would have made sense to have Heemin in the frame, watching two girls talk; but for some reason, he’s inserted via green screen, it’s insanity.

The pacing is so bizarre that halfway through, I still felt like I was waiting for the story to start. All things considered, the relatively organic character interactions at the very beginning and end are the best parts, unfortunately. Weighing in at a hefty, hefty 90 minutes, the journey from Point A to Point B is arduous at best.

Edited by Cara Musashi