Film

Labyrinth

Name: Labyrinth
Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Released: 1986
Cast: David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Toby Froud, Shelley Thompson, Christopher Malcolm

A teenage girl's tantrum-wish sends her baby brother into a goblin kingdom, and she has thirteen hours to out-riddle its glam, cruel, oddly seductive king to get him back. Half puppet spectacle, half fever dream, it's Bowie in leggings singing to Muppets while a teenager finds out that growing up is its own kind of labyrinth. Weird, horny in a way nobody quite admits, unforgettable.

TMDb rating

3.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love handmade puppetry and dreamlike logic where the rules bend as you go, and you don't mind a pop songbook score sitting in the middle of a fairy tale.

Skip it if you want a tight, plot-driven adventure, since this one wanders through its maze with more mood and whimsy than momentum, and its 1980s effects can feel dated.

What it asks of you: Its 101 minutes drift in looping, episodic detours, so settle in for a dreamlike wander rather than a brisk, tidy quest, and let the strangeness wash over you.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Dark Crystal1982

Henson's other, darker puppet epic — no jokes, no songs, just a fully realised alien world rendered entirely in animatronics and craft that still looks impossible today.

But It's slower and grimmer than Labyrinth, with none of the camp or comic relief to lighten the mood.

The Princess Bride1987

Same era of practical-effects fairy tale, but swaps dream logic for wit — a storybook romance that's endlessly quotable and gets funnier with age.

But It's gentler and more straightforwardly comic; if you want Labyrinth's strangeness and dread, this won't scratch that itch.

Legend1985

Ridley Scott's fairy tale has the same fog-machine, practical-effects opulence, plus a genuinely unhinged Tim Curry as the devil incarnate, all horns and menace.

But Thin story, and it leans harder into straight fantasy spectacle than Labyrinth's playful, self-aware weirdness.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Labyrinth

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Pan's Labyrinth2006

The literal title-sharing myth: a maze, a faun-king figure, a girl testing whether the fantasy world is escape or trap — played at maximum seriousness instead of Bowie's wink.

Del Toro takes the same premise — a girl, a labyrinth, a fantastical figure offering a bargain — and drags it into fascist Spain, where the stakes are real blood and real fascists.

But It's genuinely brutal and often terrifying, with none of Labyrinth's camp or comic relief to soften the horror.

The NeverEnding Story1984

Another '80s kid pulled into an imperiled fantasy realm, full of extraordinary practical creatures and a sincerity that makes its saddest moments land like a gut punch.

But More earnest and less flirtatious than Labyrinth — this one wants to make you cry, not swoon.

Willow1988

Lucas-produced sword-and-sorcery with the same handmade '80s fantasy texture — trolls, brownies, an evil queen — and a scrappy, generous spirit throughout.

But It's a broader, more conventional quest story, missing Labyrinth's dreamlike interiority and pop-star charisma.

Return to Oz1985

Somehow even stranger and more unsettling than Labyrinth, this is the fantasy-child's-nightmare register turned all the way up, with genuinely eerie practical creature design.

But It's bleaker and more frightening than most people expect from a follow-up to a musical — traumatised a generation of kids.

MirrorMask2005

Actual Henson Company production, co-written by Neil Gaiman, with the same girl-adrift-in-a-symbolic-dreamworld shape and a scrappy, handmade visual imagination.

But Low budget shows in places, and the story's more meandering — less pop-song momentum, more mood piece.

Time Bandits1981

Terry Gilliam's lopsided, imaginative romp through history and myth shares that same sense of a child's imagination made dangerously, gorgeously literal.

But Rougher-edged and more satirical than sweet — it's less interested in charming you than in unsettling you.

Spirited Away2001

A girl navigates a bathhouse of spirits to save someone she loves, guided by rules and riddles — the animated cousin of Labyrinth's coming-of-age maze.

But Animated and Japanese in its rhythms and imagery, which is a real shift if you're set on live-action puppetry.

Paprika2006

Trades the physical maze for a psychological one — same dream-logic structure of tests, transformations and a self you have to out-think, rendered in a wholly different medium and register.

Satoshi Kon's anime about dreams invading reality is a labyrinth turned inward — logic dissolves, identities merge, and a parade of surreal imagery rivals anything Henson built by hand.

But Animated, adult, and genuinely disorienting; it's a puzzle box rather than a bedtime adventure.