Anyone who has dabbled in the world of social media quickly finds out that it takes a special kind of person to find fame online. Whether the aspiration is to become the next big online star or influencer, the lines between what is real and fake begin to blur. Shōji Kawamori’s Labyrinth attempts to tackle this issue, among others, to show how addictive and dangerous social platforms are. Vividly animated and overly long, Kawamori’s newest film gets lost within itself.
Admittedly, Labyrinth is geared towards a younger audience, those who still find value in what online influencers are posting. From viral dance trends that promote the newest pop song to sharing vlogs of their daily lives, influencers have the world by the throat. Yet the darker side of viral fame is rarely explored, and even less explored are the impacts of negative comments and engagement. Kawamori and screenwriter Taichi Hashimoto teeter between hitting the point of the film and letting it get lost in an overly complicated script.
As the film opens, Shiori (Suzuka) is a teenager rushing out the door of her Yokohama home. Wearing her school uniform and her plain, dirty-blonde hair, it’s hard for her to stand out. When it’s revealed that she has aspirations of online fame, it’s rather endearing. A girl who blends in, wanting to stand out and be seen, is beyond relatable. Shiori, like any young teenage girl, is naive to the cruelty of the world, and when her best friend Kirara (Aoi Itō) posts an embarrassing video of Shiori, their lives are forever altered when their phones become inescapable.
Quickly, Kawamori and Hashimoto make it clear that Shiori and Kirara are close friends with vastly different personalities. At the beginning of their friendship, they vow to make money on social media to open a cafe together. Kirara seems like a natural at creating videos, and her confidence flows out of her effortlessly, never missing a beat to a song or having to redo dance steps. On the other side of that coin is Shiori, who is much less outgoing and wears her self-consciousness on her sleeve. When she messes up a dance move, it launches her into internet fame for all the wrong reasons.
Where Labyrinth works best is in the moments with Shiori navigating her growing fame. For a teen, negative attention is worse than no attention at all. When this viral video makes the rounds at her school, Shiori becomes the laughingstock of those around her. These moments feel real and highlight the cruelty the youth of the world face when something is posted against their wishes. Realistically, the impacts of social media are always changing, but where Labyrinth gets it right is how it shows cruelty leaving the digital world and becoming real, when those comments can’t just be deleted away and instead are being said right in front of someone’s face.
Sadly, the film loses much of its impact by having Shiori face an alternative version of herself. When her fame sucks her into her phone, the version that takes her place is Shiori:Revolution, a cooler, bright-haired, and self-confident copy of herself that completely takes over. It’s meant to show that what people present online isn’t truly who they are in real life. Yet there’s a lack of emotional connection to any of these characters that allows audiences to care what happens. Its message of brain rot ruining the world is timely, but it gets lost among a sea of plot points that are barely tapped into, making the film come off more as brain rot itself rather than a stance against it.
From an animation standpoint, Labyrinth makes a clear distinction between the real world and the online world. Outside of cell phones, the surroundings of Shiori’s life are bright and filled with life, paired with the doom-and-gloom aesthetic she finds inside the digital world of her phone, which is home to people just like her who were turned into stickers when their time was up. It creates a terrifying environment for Shiori to be in, especially with another version of herself trapped in a world she once wanted to escape. Ultimately, the film doesn’t utilize these clear polar-opposite worlds enough and makes the lack of depth within the script even more glaringly obvious.
There’s huge wasted potential in Labyrinth that makes the movie itself that much more frustrating when compared to how social media works in the real world. Where Kawamori and Hashimoto could’ve chosen to highlight the real-world dangers of anonymity online, they instead frame the story to fault users like Shiori or even her friend Kirara. Instead of focusing on the trolls or bots that find their way to each viral post, they seemingly blame the person at the receiving end of the abuse for posting in the first place, as if it’s a personality flaw of impressionable youth to have aspirations rather than the derangement of a harasser.
For what it’s worth, Labyrinth opens up a conversation that desperately needs to be had about social media fame and brain rot. What starts as a relatable story about a young teen looking for purpose turns into a digital fight over who is to blame for online abuse.
Labyrinth is currently playing in select theaters courtesy of GKIDS.
Labyrinth opens up a conversation that desperately needs to be had about social media fame and brain rot. What starts as a relatable story about a young teen looking for purpose turns into a digital fight over who is to blame for online abuse.
