A ChucksConnection Film Review

 

Felix Maesschalck wears black high top Converse “Chuck Taylor” All Stars in the film.

 

Labyrinthus

by Hal Peterson

 

Frikke must win the game of Labyrinthus to save his friends.

 

As Labyrinthus opens, we meet two fourteen-year-old best friends, Frikke (Spencer Bogaert) and Marko (Felix Maesschalck) as they are posing outside their school for a class photo being taken by a seemingly bumbling photographer. After the photo session is finished, the two hurry through their Dutch city to a spot where Marko has been watching out for a girl he has a crush on. So far Marko has been too shy to go up to her until Frikke goads him into doing that. But things are interrupted when Frikke is almost hit by a speeding bicyclist, who unknowingly drops a leather carry-bag. Frikke runs after the bicyclist, but he is gone. Looking inside the bag, Frikke finds a square camera with a thumb drive attached to it which he takes home. At his home we meet his mom (Jan de Bruyne) and younger sister Dorien (Nell Cattrysse), Mops the cat, and Pikkels, Frikke’s dog. We learn that Frikke is accomplished as a student and interested in science, math and computers. When Frikke checks out the camera and tries out the thumb drive on his laptop, he discovers that it contains a game, Labyrinthus, (a word that refers to a complex network of mazes) and that the camera can actually take images of people, animals, or objects and place them into the game. Immediately upon starting the game, Frikke is confronted by a villainous looking character wearing a black leather cape and beak mask, who tells Frikke he must play to the finish if he wants to try the game. Not quite realizing what he is about to get into, Frikke agrees and the game begins. Frikke uses the camera to take a picture of Mops, when Pikkels runs away, and he is amazed when within a few seconds he sees the family cat on his computer screen in the middle of the game.

Frikke and Marko on the street.

 

Quickly Frikke learns that there is a downside to the game when soon after placing Mops into the game, he hears a commotion downstairs. Mops has suddenly gone into a coma-like state, lying limp on the living room floor. Frikke is shocked and young Dorien is in tears. Eventually Frikke goes back to his room. There he discovers that the game has a human inside, a young girl (Emma Verlinden) who has no idea who she is or how she got there. The game becomes even more serious when the beaked man tells Frikke that the only way to save her is to win the game by figuring out a code, and if he quits or tries to end the game early she will die. The game environment itself is quite unusual, based on all kinds of paper themes. There are rooms filled with boxes, origami, stacks of newspapers, books, pathways of maps, houses of cards, and pop-up cities made of printed paper. Frikke himself appears in the game as Little Hat, a flying triangular folded piece of newspaper with large capital O’s for eyes. Frikke helps the girl move around and avoid the beak-masked man who is pursuit of her. He even sends an apple and some milk by using the camera, although as soon as he does that the milk becomes sour and the apple shrivels up to nothing in the outside world. The next morning on their way to school, Marko tells Frikke about a young girl who was found comatose in the park the day before and then taken to the local hospital. As soon as Frikke hears this, he rushes there and discovers that same girl from the game, whose name is Nola, in a coma. Worse yet, a few days later, Marko is somehow inserted into the game, suffering from amnesia like Nola. Frikke is devastated by this development, and runs to the hospital at night in the midst of pouring rain to find that Marko is now comatose like Nola.

 

During class Marko grabs the photo box.

 

Now the stakes are even more serious for Frikke. With so much on the line, Frikke realizes he needs to find out who else is playing the game, most likely the bicyclist who dropped the carry-bag with the camera and thumb drive. Frikke places an ad for the special camera at the local camera store. When he is contacted, he sets up a meeting with the caller, a man named Rudolf (Pepijn Caudron), although he just does that to find who the caller was. Then he and Pikkels follow Rudolf back to his residence in an abandoned factory. At first Rudolf and Frikke believe that the other person is the bad guy responsible for the game, but they quickly realize that they are both on the same side, trying to rescue the kids caught inside the game. They decide to work together to find out who is actually responsible so that person can be stopped, Nola and Marko rescued, and the game destroyed. Their quest to do so makes up the balance of the film. Things become urgent as the game nears its end. Rudolf and Frikke must figure out where the exit is inside the game and decipher the exit code from words on fortune cookies, while the man with the beak mask attempts to capture Nola, Marko, and a third kid Miranda (Pommelien Tijs), to prevent them from escaping.

 

Best Chucks Scene

 

Marko is starting to cross the bridge.

 

Felix Maesschalck in his role as Frikke’s best friend Marko wears black high top chucks throughout the film. As the film has sort of a retro feel to it, it is appropriate that chucks make an appearance along with Spencer Bogaert’s suede red low cut Vans. We also see brief shots of other kids wearing chucks, like Marko’s girl friend in white high tops and a classmate at school in well worn black high tops. The best scene featuring chucks is when a very fearful Marko is trying to cross the flimsy wood and paper bridge, one of their last obstacles to escape from the game. After the bridge supports are destroyed by the beak-masked villain, the camera provides us with close ups of his chucks as he tries to hang on and save himself.

 

Marko frantically tries to avoid falling in the water after the bridge is cut.

 

Purchase chucks, shoelaces, and books about chucks.
High Tops	Low Tops	Shoelaces Page	Books