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Hyun-Soo's
mother works as a plastic surgeon and gives
all of her daughter's friends the looks that they've
always wanted. But beauty has a price, and soon enough
Hyun-Soo's friends start comitting suicide for unknown
reasons. Hyun-Soo decides to find out what's really
going on, and uncovers dark secrets that she could
never have dreamed about even in her worst nightmares.
Suspense, originality, entertainment - three of the
things that this movie lacked. I am so sad to say that
Cinderella disappointed me severely. After a relatively
good summer of South Korean horror movies, Cinderella
takes two steps back and heads down the old "The Grudge"
path. The movie is not about two evil sisters and their
mother tormenting their third sister, as the real
Cinderella story goes. In fact, it has very little to
do with the original Cinderella story and it seems as
if the title was mainly a publicity stunt to draw
some extra attention to the movie.
The story might sound exciting and refreshing, but
believe you me, it's not. Let me try to summarize the
movie from a different direction. Hyun-Soo's friends
have all gotten plastic surgery of some sort from her
mother, but soon a long-haired ghost girl shows up
and starts forcing them to commit suicide. Hyun-Soo
then starts investigating the reason behind all this
and discovers that not everything is as it seems.
Naturally there are many twists along the way (which
of most feel ludicrous and clichéd) and in the end,
we're basically treated with the same ending that we
saw in the South Korean horror flick "Phone" a couple
of years ago - only with a plastic surgery approach.
This movie could have been so great had they taken it
in a different direction. I mean, plastic surgery can
go very wrong and I headed in thinking this would be
a semi-slasher about an ugly person killing off people
who have had plastic surgery, so naturally you can
understand my disappointment when I realized that it
was yet another "The Grudge"-copy. And a quite bad one
at that as well. There is no atmosphere in the entire
movie, and the whole thing just felt too sterile and
stale (a problem that many South Korean horror flicks
seem to have). Few of the characters are likable, and
the ones that are get killed off rather quickly.
Had this been made a few years back, I might have enjoyed
it more, but I highly doubt it. Even if this had been
an original movie, it still wouldn't have been a very
entertaining one. Obviously aimed at the MTV-generation,
this South Korean horror flick thinks that it can get
away with anything as long as it has all the standard
ingredients. Well it can't and it didn't. Even if the
cinematography is terrific, the movie was still a huge
disappointment for me so I can only recommend this for
people who still haven't grown sick of the endless
stream of "The Grudge" rip-offs.
Nothing special, some cut faces.
I have to confess that it was nice to hear some South
Korean rock music in there, unfortunately the theme
melody feels way too familiar and all too unoriginal.
Yet another twist on the tired creepy ghost girl concept.
Haven't they exploited this idea enough all ready? This
movie did absolutely nothing for me. I wasn't scared,
I wasn't entertained and I definitely wasn't pleased.
If you want to see a heavily flawed ghost flick that
contradicts itself every fifth minute, be my guest, but
don't say I didn't warn you.
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