‘You want to reach out and touch everything’: why Labyrinth is my feelgood movie

The 1980s were the golden age for the annoying little brother. Before the dawn of those mischief-dulling devices – the smartphone and tablet – a pesky sibling with a flair for invention could really make life hell for an aloof older sister. For me, mimicry and tickle torture were just the basics. My finest hour? Removing the slats in my sister’s top bunk-bed, so she hopped on to the mattress to come crashing down like Wile E Coyote.

In December 1986, our one sliver of common ground was that we both wanted to see Labyrinth. Me, because I was a hardcore Muppets fan, and Jim Henson’s fantasy flick was generating serious playground buzz (pre-internet, we had no inkling it had tanked at the US box office over the summer, breaking Henson’s heart). And her, because it was about a teenage girl who summons goblins to kidnap her baby brother (I suspect she went along just to learn the incantations).

Presented with the terms of our Christmas ceasefire – and intrigued by David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King, plus a script credited to Terry Jones (the Python star later claimed the story was wrestled away from him) – my parents booked the tickets.

Labyrinth opens with Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) running home in the rain, late for her babysitting gig, her parents hightailing it out of the door as tiny Toby shrieks amid the thunderclaps. With her button eyes flashing, the girl offers up the Where’s Wally-suited tot to the goblins (the moment they appear onscreen was my second-ever jumpscare, after the Ghostbusters library poltergeist).

Suddenly, all Tina Turner hair and don’t-know-where-to-look leggings, Bowie arrives to set the challenge: Sarah must complete his extravagant maze in a weirdly specific 13 hours, or else damn her bro to permanent goblin mode.

Henson’s final project is, I still believe, the most imaginative, beautifully made and utterly human film out there – watch it now and it feels like an anti-AI manifesto. You want to reach out and touch everything on the screen, and thanks to the largely practical-effects ethos, you could have (even Bowie’s crystal ball-twiddling was real, performed from behind by master juggler Michael Moschen).

By the director’s admission, the plot dips the pockets of The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and especially Maurice Sendak (the author’s books were placed on Sarah’s nightstand, and a thank-you note left in the credits, to sweeten his legal team). But to me, Labyrinth is its own monster: a witty, weird, eerie, scatological, Python-absurd and profound adventure whose anything-goes vibe, you suspect, would be squashed by meddling studio execs if the long-mooted reboot ever actually happens.

In ’86, through surreptitious sideways glances, I could sense my sister enjoying it all as much as I was. There was the turkey-hatted Wiseman, at war with his own headpiece. Ludo the shagpile gentle giant, who in a more profitable parallel universe might have achieved Chewbacca-style pop-culture immortality. The Fire Gang, whose detachable-limbs routine starts off riotous but, like so much in Labyrinth, rapidly turns sinister (“We’re going to pull your head off!”).

Rewatching the film for this article, I felt the same jolt of joy from the flagship moments. The showstopping Magic Dance routine (Bowie tossing Toby sky-high like an idiot dad at the park). The Bog of Eternal Stench, casually parping like a minibus of rugby players. The Escher-inspired staircase finale, whose mind-bending impossibility makes Backrooms look as prosaic as a suburban bungalow.

But I’d forgotten the incredible sequence where Sarah falls into a thicket of moss-green hands, all forming leering faces with their knuckles and thumbs. And I’m surprised that young-me made it through the masquerade ball, its grotesque, cackling aristocrats evoking a little of the same warped-fairytale dread as Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves.

Most treasured of all is the scene that reset my relationship with my sister. Hazy-headed from an enchanted peach, Sarah stumbles into a replica of her bedroom, while a bustling crone distracts her with toys and trinkets, reducing the mission to a half-remembered throb. At the time, I was thrilled when Sarah finally snaps back into focus, smashing this hollow facsimile of fulfilment and setting off with renewed vigour.

Now, it resonates even louder. Adult life will turn your head with shiny, superficial baubles. It’s up to us to keep our eyes on what truly matters. And what’s more important than having your sibling’s back, “through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered” (or, in our case, job crises, relationship woes and ailing parents)?

My sister and I never battled so hard again after that. And now, with a squabble-prone son and daughter of my own, Labyrinth has a dual purpose. Henson’s masterpiece is not only my feelgood movie – it’s the best peace offering I know.