Rating:

In a new telling of the Hans Christian Anderson tale of a pair of cured red shoes, Yong-gyun Kim delivers The Red Shoes, a film detailing the plight of a single mother who finds a pair of red shoes and decides to take them home and wear them. She soon finds out that she should have never taken the shoes, much less put them on. She has inadvertently involved her and her daughter in an ongoing, supernatural power struggle that could kill them both. Let’s take a look at the trailer, and then read my thoughts on the film after the jump.

After discovering her husband having an affair, Sun-jae (Hye-su Kim) takes her young daughter, Tae-su (Yeon-ah Park), to go live in a shithole apartment located near a subway platform. Shortly after the move, Sun-jae sees a pair of red shoes (they are actually pink, but are referred to as red in the film) left unattended while on the subway. Sun-jae, either because she is conveniently a shoe collector or because she cannot control herself, decides to take them home. She soon finds that that was an extremely bad decision because even though she finds that wearing these shoes gives her a badly needed surge of confidence, any female who comes in contact with the shoes exhibits exaggerated feelings of jealousy and greed and will attempt to steal the shoes for themselves. Imagine the Shoes of Sauron instead of a Ring, and you get the general Idea.

Her own daughter is not immune to this either, as almost immediately after bringing home the shoes, Tae-su begins fighting with her mother, both mentally and physically, over the shoes and continually steals them and wears them when her mother is not around. After the death of someone who stole the shoes from Sun-jae, she enlists the help of her new boyfriend to uncover the secret of the shoes. What they soon find out is that the shoes are cursed and that whoever steals the shoes from their owner (the person who first finds them) will suffer a grisly death, usually ending with the victims feet being cut off and the shoes finding their way back to the owner. Sun-jae must now unravel the history of the shoes, and hopefully return them to their rightful owner before her and her daughter suffer a violent demise.

The Red Shoes is a South Korean film directed by Yong-gyun Kim, who doesn’t hide the fact that he is mimicking other well known films in the genre. You have a bit of The Eye, some of Ringu, a bit of The Grudge and a whole lot of Dark Water. So right off the bat, if you are not a fan of these Asian ghost stories, there really isn’t much here you may find enjoyable aside from the fact that The Red Shoes sure does look good. From the scenes in the subway and even in the apartment, to the period based flashbacks, The Red Shoes does garner some points in the cinematography department.

As is normally the case with these style of ghost flicks, the gore is limited. However, it is not absent. There a few unsettling images that come in the form of dream-sequences…a bird flapping in a bloody-sink, torrents of blood pouring from the ceiling akin to the elevator doors opening in the Overlook Hotel. There are also a couple scenes involving Tae-su that are done pretty well, especially a scene in which Tae-su starts bleeding from underneath her dress like 1000 stuck pigs, and another scene involving her feet becoming…unattached.

The film also uses a soundtrack that consists of a guitar theme used in certain scenes as well as some NIN-ish glitch music in others. None of it amazing by any means, but it stood out enough to add a little personality to a somewhat generic film. Everyone does solid jobs in their respective roles, and the scenes with the little girl can be a tad unsettling as I don’t know if it is just me, but I always notice a big difference with how Asian filmmakers handle children in film over us Americans. They can be a little bit…rougher…than one might expect. This works really, really well in the scenes in which Sun-jae and Tae-su are fighting over the shoes.

There are a couple subplots in the film. One about Tae-su’s reluctance to except her mother being with her new boyfriend and not with her father. The other story is delivered in flashback form, and in pieces. It is the back story of the shoes and why they are cursed, and while not an original telling, it is an effective 1940s period piece during the Japanese occupied Korea that contains some surprisingly surreal dance numbers.

Overall, the film is a bit over average for me. What really hurts the film is the ending. It is a bit convoluted and felt too hurried. It may seem as if it was tacked on to the end of the film, even using the standard “lets-explain-everything-via-a-series-of-quick-flashbacks”, it seems as if this is not the case. But regardless, the climax of the film ended up knocking the score down a bit. So in the end, The Red Shoes maybe not be worth owning (I wont), unless you are a collector of the Asian ghost genre of film, I still feel comfortable recommending someone give it a go if they enjoy these types of films, even if the ending is what it is.

And speaking of the ending. If anyone here has watched this film, or does so in the future, let’s compare notes. I’d like to see if your interpretation of the ending is the same as mine. But until then, enjoy this little extra. A music video for the movie: