Into the Labyrinth (2019)
Directed by Donato Carrisi
No — Into the Labyrinth is not woke, scoring 0 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Italian thrillers have a way of arriving in the anglophone world with little fanfare and leaving the same way, and Into the Labyrinth is a faithful example of the form.
Consciousness Markers
The cast is overwhelmingly Italian with a couple of international names (Dustin Hoffman). There is no conscious diversity-casting agenda or comment on representation.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext appear anywhere in the film.
A woman is the victim of captivity, but the film treats her trauma as a mystery-plot device rather than advancing any feminist thesis; the psychology and investigative agency belong to the male leads.
No engagement with racial politics, racism, or racial identity as a theme.
No environmental or climate themes whatsoever.
The dark-web 'games' and exploitation ring are presented as criminal horror, not as a critique of capitalism or class.
No body-positivity themes or messaging present.
Psychological trauma and fragmented memory are central, but they are treated as thriller mechanics, not as neurodivergence advocacy or representation.
The film is a fictional thriller with no historical revisionism or reinterpretation of real events.
The film is a twisty genre mystery that shows rather than lectures; it contains no social-message speechmaking or moralizing monologues.
Why it received this score
Italian thrillers have a way of arriving in the anglophone world with little fanfare and leaving the same way, and Into the Labyrinth is a faithful example of the form. Donato Carrisi adapts his own novel into a puzzle box about a girl found after fifteen years in an underground maze, a psychologist who pokes at her fractured memory, and a dying private investigator chasing the men who made the game. Dustin Hoffman turns up as the doctor, Toni Servillo broods handsomely as the detective, and the plot folds back on itself with the grim satisfaction of a well-made lock.
The film has no interest in the cultural questions of its moment. Its captive is a woman, but her ordeal is a mechanism for the mystery, not a thesis about anything. Her agency belongs to the men who study her. The criminal enterprise is a dark-web cabal of sadists, presented as horror rather than as an argument about markets or class. There is no commentary on race, no environmental sermon, no affirmation of body or mind, no revision of the historical record, and no speechmaking of any kind. The movie wants to unsettle you and then send you home.
This is not a complaint. It is a classification. The genre machinery is competent, the twists land with a thud that is at least an honest thud, and the whole enterprise resists the temptation to mean anything. For a critic whose job is the measurement of social consciousness, the result is a clean sheet, an empty ledger, a film that simply refuses to participate. Rotten Tomatoes sits at forty percent. The culture-war ledger sits at zero.
Everything here is machinery: the abduction, the therapy, the terminal illness, the final reveal that the healer was the tormentor all along. None of it is asked to carry a message, and none of it pretends to. We are left with a competent Italian mystery and a rare commodity in the current market, a film with nothing to teach us and no interest in trying. That is, by the standards of this ledger, a kind of distinction. A quiet one. But a distinction nonetheless.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
When a kidnapping victim turns up alive after fifteen years, a profiler and a private investigator try to piece together the mystery.
Questions about Into the Labyrinth
Is Into the Labyrinth woke?
No — Into the Labyrinth is not woke, scoring 0 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Into the Labyrinth have any woke elements?
No. All 10 markers score zero.
How does Into the Labyrinth compare to other 2019 movies?
It ranks #267 of the 284 films from 2019 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Black Christmas (79).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.