Labyrinth (1986)
★★★½ — Labyrinth (1986)
Released in 1986, Labyrinth arrived at a curious crossroads in family fantasy filmmaking. The mid-1980s had produced a run of films that trusted younger audiences with genuinely strange, sometimes unsettling material, and this production sits comfortably in that company. The story follows Sarah, a teenage girl who, in a moment of frustration, wishes her baby stepbrother away to the Goblin King, only to spend the rest of the film racing through a vast, shifting maze to get him back before time runs out. Simple enough as a premise, but the world surrounding it is anything but.
The film was a joint production between Henson Associates and Lucasfilm Ltd., bringing together two of the more imaginative creative organisations working in popular cinema at the time. Directing was Jim Henson himself, the puppeteer and creative force who had already demonstrated what he could do with a dark fantasy setting in The Dark Crystal four years earlier. Where that film leaned heavily into shadow and myth, Labyrinth reaches for something stranger and more playful, a world populated by creatures built from foam, wire, and no small amount of craftsmanship. The screenplay was written by Terry Jones, and the film's score and several of its songs were composed and performed by David Bowie, who also takes the central role of Jareth, the Goblin King. It is, on paper, an unusual combination of talents, and the result is polished but unmistakably eccentric. The film ran for 101 minutes and was shot primarily in the United Kingdom.
The cast is led by Jennifer Connelly as Sarah and David Bowie as Jareth, and between them they account for much of the film's enduring reputation. Connelly was a teenager at the time of filming and brings a grounded quality to a role that requires her to react credibly to an awful lot of latex and mechanical eyes. Bowie, meanwhile, was already one of the more recognisable faces in popular culture, and his presence here is hard to categorise, somewhere between theatrical villain and glam-rock oddity. The supporting ensemble includes Toby Froud as the baby Toby, alongside Shelley Thompson and Christopher Malcolm as Sarah's parents. Much of the film's texture, though, comes from the creature performers and the puppet characters they brought to life, figures like the dwarf Hoggle, the gentle beast Ludo, and the chivalrous Sir Didymus, all of whom have stuck in the memories of viewers who caught the film young. For a broader sense of the 1980s fantasy and horror landscape, it is worth noting that the decade produced some genuinely distinctive work across genres, from the body horror of Re-Animator to the atmospheric dread of The Serpent and the Rainbow.
A beautifully weird little gem from the '80s fantasy era. Jim Henson’s Labyrinth is equal parts enchanting, surreal, and just plain odd, which probably explains why so many of us kids obsessed over it while parents quietly wondered what they'd just let us watch. The puppetry and animatronics are nothing short of magical. Seriously, these effects still hold up, especially considering this wasn’t some billion-dollar CGI spectacle. And David Bowie doing his best Goblin King cosplay is equally iconic. I mean, yeah... it's a little uncomfortable now watching him basically play a glam-rock Pied Piper trying to snatch a baby. But at the time it was just another Tuesday night movie for me and my sister. Jennifer Connelly is great as Sarah. She carries the whole thing with wide-eyed determination, even when things get gloriously bizarre. And Hoggle? Oh, he became a D&D villain in my campaign for like six months. Still one of my better NPC decisions. It’s not perfect (pacing drags a bit, some scenes feel longer than a Tolkien novel, and the moral implications of the main plot are... questionable by today’s standards) But it’s charming, creative, and full of that old-school Henson magic. Not quite a classic, but absolutely a cult favorite. And hey, if you grew up with it? It’s hard not to love.
I keep coming back to the fact that films like this simply do not get made in quite the same way anymore. There is a handmade quality to the creature work here that no amount of processing power has managed to replace, and that tactile strangeness is a big part of why it lingers. Yes, it has its wobbles, and I would not argue against anyone who found some of it a touch indulgent in the middle stretch. But there is a generosity of imagination running through it that you do not always find in fantasy aimed at younger audiences. It earns its cult status the honest way: not by being flawless, but by being genuinely itself. Some films age into classics. Others just age into something you cannot quite stop watching.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1986 | Watched: 2025-05-14
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Labyrinth (1986) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads · ITVX Premium
Rent: Sky Store
Buy: Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Hulu · fuboTV · Peacock Premium
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Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Jim Henson: The Dark Crystal (1982)
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 1980s: Nightmare City (1980) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Style Wars (1983) · Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
More adventure: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · The Eagle (1925) · Louisiana Story (1948) · The General (1926)
More family: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Wonder (2017) · Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anastasia (1997)
