Labyrinth is a fantasy cult classic, but the Muppet magic and catchy songs make it easy
to overlook certain things about it that are super dark and disturbing.
Here are a few reasons Labyrinth should keep you up at night.
When we first see Ludo, he's hanging upside down by a rope while weird little armored
guys torture him with bitey lizard babies on sticks while he howls in pain and frustration.
Given how sweet the big lug turns out to be, that is seriously messed up.
If Ludo had been a humanoid character instead of a lumbering monster, that scene would have
never made it into a kids movie.
Can you imagine if Sarah, or even Hoggle, had to go through that?
It would basically be Saw with muppets...
Which it kind of already is.
Throughout the movie, it’s pretty clear that Jareth, the Goblin King, is in love with
Sarah.
The problem?
She’s about 16, and while most girls who watched the movie back in 1986 thought that
was super romantic and awesome, it seems like everyone was pretty cool with Jareth robbing
the cradle both literally and figuratively.
He is, after all, pretty clearly a supernatural creature, so while the late, great, David
Bowie was 39 when he was playing the part, Jareth might be centuries old.
Even weirder, his whole thing is a creepy game of controlling and gaslighting Sarah,
going as far as telling her he wants her to fear him, love him, and “do as I ask and
I shall be your slave.”
No wonder the kids who saw this grew up to be the generation that made 50 Shades a best-seller.
Sarah even occasionally seems to reciprocate some of Jareth's attraction, but that’s
pretty easy to understand, because, well, David Bowie.
There aren’t a lot of humans who wouldn't want the Thin White Duke to be in love with
them.
The scene that really makes you think Sarah might think Jareth is pretty awesome is the
lavish, Cinderella-style ballroom scene, which occurs in Sarah's mind after Jareth sends
a drugged peach her way.
One could argue that if the fantasy is happening in her mind, she's revealing truths that are
lurking in her subconscious, but it also took some Goblin Kingdom Roofies for her to get
there, and that's pretty icky.
Given the rest of the movie, it makes more sense to come to the conclusion that Jareth's
drugs have some suggestive power.
If you can get past that, it’s sorta dreamy seeing Sarah in her grown-up cosplay dancing
romantically with Jareth, but it’s still pretty dark and creepy.
Sarah even wakes up splayed in a junkyard with a maggoty peach in her hand, which is
probably the most surreal walk of shame ever.
After Sarah's hallucinatory school dance with Jareth and subsequent awakening in the junkyard,
she runs into a really cranky Muppet who fusses at her for not looking where she's going.
It's this junk lady Muppet who directs Sarah into a room that looks just like her bedroom
at home.
So much so, in fact, that Sarah thinks it was all a dream, until the Muppet trash lady
comes in and starts distracting Sarah with all her own stuff.
As Sarah tries to shake off the dreamy peach-induced state, the garbage Muppet starts piling stuff
on Sarah, preying on her nostalgia and sentiment to turn her into a misshapen pile of refuse,
too.
Luckily, Sarah realizes the triviality of material possessions, and remembers she's
supposed to save her brother.
The thing that is so terrifying about this Muppet is that she knows what things are important
to Sarah.
She knows Sarah's childhood.
She knows Sarah's heart, and she uses all of that information to manipulate and potentially
reshape her into a monster.
Imagine watching this as a kid and then going back to your own bedroom, surrounded by all
your own favorite toys.
You’d be begging Marie Kondo to show up and get rid of the whole lot.
Jareth is the Goblin King, but he doesn’t seem to be a Goblin himself, unless they somehow
evolve like Pokemon into humans with a little too much eyeliner.
Why is that?
Why would the goblins have a non-goblin king?
Why are there no other human-type people in their world?
What did Jareth do to them?
There are talking worms, creatures made of hands, those doors with the guy at the top
and the bottom, exploding flamingos, and more, but no other humanoid figure around.
So, presumably, before Sarah called on Jareth to steal Toby for her, he spent all his time
hanging around creatures who are half his size and look like talking Brussels sprouts.
How lonely must that be?
No wonder he got super obsessed with Sarah and wanted to be with her.
Labyrinth is a fairy tale of sorts, so there have to be stakes, and there has to be a villain,
but baby Toby finds his striped self in some perilous situations.
Jareth throws him into the air, claims he can turn him into a Goblin, and even sets
him on a dizzying set of gravity-defying stairs.
Watch closely, though, and you’ll see that Ja reth isn’t the only one with some bad
ideas about baby safety.
What about Sarah when she roughly bounces him trying to get him to stop crying?
What about insulting him right to his poor young face?
What about the time that Sarah, you know, summoned a Goblin King to kidnap him?
Poor Toby.
He has it worse that anybody else.
Except maybe that bird that sat on top of that old Muppet dude’s head.
That guy had the most boring job ever.