Shock Labyrinth

Notable as the first Japanese full-length, live-action digital 3D feature film (the 3D version is only included on the Blu-ray release), Takashi Shimizu's Shock Labyrinth concerns a group of teens who sneak into an amusement park haunted house after closing hours, a visit that ends horribly when one of the kids mysteriously disappears. Ten years later, as the friends plan a reunion, a woman named Yuki (Misako Renbutsu)—claiming to be the friend who was lost—shows up and disrupts their get-together. Before they are able to ascertain the truth of her story, Yuki abruptly falls into a coma, and the friends rush her to a hospital that turns out to be strangely vacant. Before long, it becomes evident that the group are not in a hospital, but instead reliving the haunted house episode from a decade earlier. In this weird and increasingly horrifying setting, each member of the circle admits secret guilt over the incident in their youth. Although it had the potential to be an effective thriller—Shimizu helmed the 2002 horror classic Ju-On and its 2004 American remake The Grudge—Shock Labyrinth suffers from a clumsy and convoluted narrative. Not recommended. (P. Hall)