Review for Shock Labyrinth 3D

Introduction

My heart sank faster than the Titanic when I opened up that jiffy envelope and discovered a pair of 3D glasses, red and blue lenses all present and correct. Yes, 3D comes to DVD, in its earlier, anaglyph incarnation, jumping on the bandwagon with all the rest of the gimmicky rubbish currently displacing actual storytelling from our cinemas. You've probably guessed that I'm not exactly a fan of pseudo-3D, that technology that uses tricks of illusion to create a false 3D image. Besides, I only recently spent more money than I care to discuss on a website, having laser eye surgery so that I would never have to wear glasses again. I don't appreciate the modern vogue in cinema requiring that I revisit my past quite so soon. Still, I feel as if I ought to take one for the team, and give reviewing Shock Labyrinth 3D a shot.


Except 3D doesn't work for me, or at least the anaglyph 3D with the coloured lenses, which is the only type of 3D I've tried, doesn't work for me. The Shock Labyrinth DVD doesn't help much, with the check-disc glitching and skipping for the first five minutes before settling down. But I give it a try anyway… Isn't 3D supposed to be 3D? All I'm getting is double vision, a ghostly central image with a red shadow to one side, and a blue shadow to the other, and my vision alternating between red and blue. Quickly adjourn to the Internet to see how 3D works. Something about eye-dominance being an issue. I am left-eye dominant, and they suggest wearing the glasses the other way around, right-eye red and left-eye blue, instead of vice versa. Catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Can I look any more stupid? Try the DVD again. No difference. Back to the Internet to find a rather more helpful article.


Apparently pseudo-3D works because of an optical illusion; it's a trick that requires that we look at the world in a way that our eyes and brains haven't naturally evolved for. When we normally look at something, our focus and our vision converge at the same point, the same plane. 3D works by having our vision converge on a plane behind the point on which we focus. It isn't natural, and not everyone can do it. It's the same principle behind those magic eye pictures that were so popular in the nineties. You focus on the picture, but you look behind it. In all my hours of staring at those things, I never saw a damned thing. All my friends were looking at tigers and dolphins and all sorts of fancy stuff, all I saw was a 2D image of conglomerated, colourful birdshit. I got pretty paranoid after a while, thinking the whole world was perpetrating an elaborate joke on me, and I still have trust issues to this day. I give the DVD another try, at which point I realise that I have a headache, and eyestrain. Once again I come to the opinion that I have always held… That 3D can f*** off right back to the fifties.


So Shock Labyrinth 2D. Yes, the studios have been kind enough to cater for the un-evolved like me, and have included a traditional 2D version of the film in addition to the 3D disc, and hopefully I can now find the goodwill to review this film without malice. After all it is directed by Takashi Shimizu, he of the Grudge franchise. There should be spooky goings-on galore in this film.

Ken revisits his friends after several years away. He last saw them prior to the death of his mother, on a trip to a theme park that went horribly awry. He was persuaded by his friend Mikoto to sneak into a Haunted House after hours to see what all the adult fuss was about, and with the two boys went their blind friend Rin, as well as Yuki and her kid sister, Miyu. Five children went in, and only four came out, shocked and traumatised. None of them saw Yuki again. Now Ken is returning to that town, trauma having blotted out his memories, to meet up with Mikoto and Rin again. But the night that they are supposed to meet up, there is a knock on Rin's door, and a bedraggled girl in a white dress appears on her doorstep, claiming to be Yuki. Apparently they left her in the haunted house all those years ago, where she has been trapped ever since. Hardly believing the turn of events, they take Yuki to her home, where Miyu has now grown up, although the loss of her daughter has driven their mother insane. But an accident leaves Yuki unconscious, and at that time of night, they have trouble finding a hospital. When they do get to one, it's strangely abandoned. Yuki wakes up and runs off into the darkened corridors of the hospital, and the friends try to find her. But this hospital is chillingly familiar.

The 3D Disc

This is my first ever 3D disc, so I haven't the slightest idea whether this is a good transfer or not, that's aside from the first five minutes of glitches, which I hope are confined to the check disc only. Besides, with those glasses wrapped around my face, I can barely see my hand in front of me, let alone judge the quality of a DVD transfer. It's 1.85:1 anamorphic. 3D obviously, with the menus presented as such as well. You have a choice between DD 5.1 and DD 2.0 Japanese, and the player-generated subtitles can be turned off with the remote control. The only extra on this disc is the film's trailer presented in 2D. Here are some 3D screenshots. If you have some red and blue specs lying around, see if the effect works for you before investing in the disc.

The 2D Disc

Hooray! Colour! Once again, we have a 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer, which thankfully is confined to 2 dimensions. There aren't any issues with the disc authoring, and the image is clear and sharp, a proper film to PAL conversion, and with only the occasional ghosting indicative of a digital camera rather than film causing any slight niggles. Otherwise the film has a light touch of grain to it, good detail levels, and the proper dark and spooky aesthetic appropriate to its genre.


Audio once again comes in DD 5.1 and DD 2.0 Japanese, although for some odd reason, the subtitles on this disc are burnt into the print, rather than player generated. It probably ought to have been vice versa, raising the possibility of 3D subtitles. The surrounds work to build on the spooky atmosphere, and if you are prone to such feelings, prepare to be unsettled by this film.

Extras

All of the extras are on the 2D disc, and comprise 25 minutes worth of Interviews, with individual chats with Takashi Shimizu, and stars Yuya Yagira, Ryo Katsuji, Ai Maeda, Erina Mizuno, and Misako Renbutsu, all accessible from the menu.

Then there are the Behind The Scenes Featurettes, 17 minutes worth. You can see more about the haunted house where the film was shot, the secret of the stereoscopic camera, the cast and crew fooling around, Takashi Shimizu at the Venice Film Festival, and the Press Conference on the Opening Day.

This disc also repeats the film's trailer.

Conclusion: The 3D Disc

I figured it was only fair to give it another chance, so I subjected myself to it again. Stupid glasses on, wincing against the eyestrain and the headache, weird red/blue monochrome, and accepting that the picture will be so dark that most of the detail will be lost. It turns out that I really ought to have given those magic eye pictures more of a chance. If only I had stood there like a gormless idiot for 40 minutes instead of half an hour, something may have happened, as 40 minutes into Shock Labyrinth, I had my first glimpse of a 3D effect. It's the most ideal shot, with the protagonists lined up in a corridor, and I could see just where they were in relation to each other. Of course as soon as I concentrated on the image, the 3D effect vanished to be replaced by double vision again, but I saw the 3D! Following that, I would get a shot of 3D every once in a while, albeit fleetingly, but just enough to give me an inkling of what I usually miss out on. What may be disappointing to some is that in the behind the scenes extras, you can see that the film is shot stereographically, with twin cameras, and for the newer polarising lens systems. Yet what we get on DVD is the old-fashioned anaglyph version with the coloured lenses. So we aren't seeing Shock Labyrinth 3D the way that the director intended.

The film? I didn't watch that, I was concentrating too much on whether I could see in 3D or not.

Conclusion: The 2D Disc

It isn't long before the first 3D money shot. In this case it's a ghostly toy rabbit, floating out of one wall, then coming towards camera, floating past the centre of frame, going back in then through the other wall. There's a whole lot of that in 3D film, lots of camera dolly into and out of frame, lots of zooms in and pull backs, lots of things flying past, towards, and away from camera. In 3D it will probably all look fantastic to whoever can resolve it. In 2D it looks like a load of pretentious w***. It merely cements my opinion that while 2D films should never be converted to 3D, 3D films just shouldn't be watched in 2D, but seeing as the only way that I personally can appreciate Shock Labyrinth is to watch it the old-fashioned way, I have to make allowances for the different style of filming. And at least this time I can concentrate on the story, rather than the technology.


I wasn't scared, I felt no chills, no thrills, and none of the uneasiness and discomfort that comes from films of this nature, the Ju-ons and the Grudges of the world, the particular sub-genre of horror with which Takashi Shimizu has become synonymous. Perhaps it's the lack of impact that creepy girls in white dresses have on me. But I think it's more that this film just lacks the scares. After all, the main object of terror is a toy rabbit, hardly a spine-tingler at the best of times. Setting the story in a haunted house in a theme park automatically reduces the fear factor, simply because you know that the environs are meant to be spooky. There are very few moments in the film that startle, or that made me jump. It doesn't help either that the cast is really quite non-descript, the usual collection of teens that do little other than react at stuff, and there's very little there to establish their characters, or engage any kind of audience empathy.


Yet on the other hand, as the film unfolded, I began to appreciate the technical intricacy of it a lot more. It's a situation where past and present collide, the events that took place in the haunted house ten years previously, now have a bearing on what happens in the abandoned hospital. And as the film progresses it becomes clear that the reverse is true as well. The way that events link together so intricately is really quite appealing. The way that the plot is constructed, well it's nifty. And the end throws up a really appealing coda, typical of the genre, but appreciable nonetheless, that you would probably miss if you had red and blue lenses obscuring your vision.


This is the first 3D DVD that I have watched, and I sincerely hope that it is the last. As for Shock Labyrinth the movie… The story grew on me, and by the end of the film, I thought the way that it was put together was really entertaining. But it's still a horror movie that lacks any genuine menace or shocks.