Seventeen-year-old Shiori Maezawa’s quiet life fractures when a humiliating social media put up shatters greater than her cellphone display screen — it splinters her identification. Labyrinth, directed by Shōji Kawamori, folds teenage insecurity, idol tradition and smartphone anxieties right into a surreal story the place an anxious model of Shiori is trapped in a darkish, digital underworld whereas an idealized, outgoing doppelganger takes over her actual life. The movie premiered on the Tokyo Worldwide Movie Pageant on October 28 and later screened at Scotland Loves Anime on November 2, 2025, making it a contemporary, festival-oriented experiment in tech-age physique horror and pop spectacle.
Labyrinth poster — director Shōji Kawamori’s smartphone-age fable.
Plot overview: fractured identification and a smartphone-induced nightmare
At its core, Labyrinth follows Anxious Shiori as jealousy and betrayal push her towards a literal fracture of self. After her greatest pal Kirara posts a humiliating clip on-line, Shiori’s hidden persona splinters: one self turns into trapped in an empty, liminal digital realm populated by reworked souls, whereas the opposite blossoms into an bold, camera-ready sensation aiming to rack up thousands and thousands of likes. The movie alternates between these two realities — the eerie, Silent Hill-esque labyrinth contained in the cellphone and the gaudy, idol-driven actual world — exploring what it prices to carry out for an viewers of strangers.
Themes and social critique
Social media as identification stress cooker
Labyrinth leans closely into the concept fashionable connectivity calls for fixed efficiency. The movie literalizes the psychology of on-line life: folks develop into flat stickers or emoticons, decreased to curated expressions that match a feed. Kawamori makes use of this metaphor to critique how anonymity and parasocial metrics (likes, shares, follower counts) can hole out character and encourage harmful cut up personas.
Jealousy, friendship and the curated self
Shiori’s battle is each private and cultural: she envies Kirara’s easy charisma whereas pouring her true emotions into an nameless account. That secret coping mechanism — hiding behind stickers and curated content material — turns into her undoing, and the movie asks whether or not fashionable youth can keep genuine relationships when digital forex undervalues emotional honesty.
Visuals and animation: daring concepts, blended execution
Visually, Labyrinth provides placing moments. The digital underworld is wealthy with industrial imagery: gigantic presses flatten three-dimensional beings into two-dimensional stickers whereas purple textual content pours like blood — a memorable metaphor for the way digital techniques can crush individuality. Nonetheless, the movie’s option to render characters solely in 3D CG undermines emotional nuance at instances. The animation can really feel doll-like; the bodily exaggeration and squash-and-stretch dynamics of conventional 2D animation are largely absent, which reduces some scenes’ visceral affect.
Characters and performances
Shiori capabilities because the viewers proxy, however her anxious model is deliberately muted and inward-facing, which makes sustained engagement difficult. Her idealized counterpart — loud, assured, and nearly vampiric in charisma — is way extra entertaining and intentionally so. Supporting figures like Komori, a tragic pink-bunny sticker information, provide comedian aid and pathos; his design and comedian helplessness are a few of the movie’s few constantly efficient touches. The antagonist, Suguru Kagami, operates as a caricature of predatory media moguls: his final scheme to free everybody’s “very best selves” reads as each grandiose and unclear, leaving his motivations considerably undercooked.
Tone, pacing and viewers response
Labyrinth oscillates between earnest stress and unintentional comedy. Many audiences — particularly at pageant screenings — reacted with surprised laughter at a few of the movie’s stranger tonal selections. Scenes that seem meant to be dramatic typically land as weird or unintentionally comedian, making a viewing expertise that may really feel uneven. The practically two-hour runtime exacerbates pacing points; the movie often lingers on concepts with out totally creating them, producing a sensation of a bloated however energetic experiment.
Why Labyrinth divides viewers
There’s a transparent cut up between viewers who admire the movie’s audacity and those that are pissed off by its incoherence. When you respect surreal, idea-driven cinema full of provocative visible metaphors and don’t thoughts narrative leaps, Labyrinth provides an intriguing — if messy — journey. When you choose tightly plotted character arcs and animation that sells emotional realism, you might discover the movie unsatisfying. The combination of pop-idol aesthetics, body-horror metaphors and slapstick thrives makes for an uneven mix that’s entertaining in brief bursts however not often cohesive as an entire.
The place Labyrinth lands in Kawamori’s filmography
Shōji Kawamori is greatest recognized for sprawling, genre-mixing tasks, and Labyrinth continues that tendency by trying to mix mecha-like manufacturing design, idol tradition and psychological horror. Not like Kawamori’s most iconic works, which regularly stability spectacle and human drama with surgical readability, Labyrinth prioritizes idea over polish. That alternative yields fascinating imagery and moments of real invention, but in addition a way that too many concepts had been strung collectively with out a agency guiding logic.
Additional studying
For readers curious concerning the pageant context and screenings, see the Tokyo Worldwide Movie Pageant and Scotland Loves Anime pageant pages for program notes and screening data. Tokyo Worldwide Movie Pageant and Scotland Loves Anime present schedules and pageant write-ups.
Ultimate ideas
Labyrinth is a polarizing, typically infuriating, and infrequently good meditation on identification within the smartphone period. Its strongest moments are vivid metaphors about digital flattening and the price of performing for a worldwide viewers, however inconsistent tone, clumsy narrative selections and a very doll-like CG aesthetic restrict its emotional resonance. When you’re ready for a unusual, off-kilter expertise that favors idea and spectacle over clear storytelling, Labyrinth provides loads of “What am I even watching?” moments to savor. If you need readability and cohesive character work, strategy with warning — however don’t be stunned if some scenes linger in your thoughts lengthy after the credit roll.
