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Red Shoes, The |
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A pair of red (well, pink really) shoes catches a divorced
mother's eyes in the subway. Since they don't seem to have
an owner, she decides to bring them home. There's something
special about them and the colour is quite unique so she's
very happy about her find. What she's not aware of is the
fact that the shoe's are haunted...
After the more recent Asian ghost flicks, like Hypnosis,
Doll Master and Red Eye, I have slowly started to believe
that their time has passed for now as far as horror movies
are concerned. When I found The Red Shoes in my mail this
morning, I was still pretty psyched about seeing it, hoping
that South Korea still had some more scares to give. And
that they did. The Red Shoes is a pretty creepy ghost story
about a pair of shoes who kill their owners. Now, only
Asia could make a horror movie about a pair of killer shoes
scary and entertaining without ending up being cheesy.
I was still partially right however, Asia is loosing their
touch when it comes to horror flicks like this one. The
Red Shoes survives solely on cheap scares (and there is a
bunch of them), unoriginal but effective scene settings
and brilliant photography. The story itself a whole lot of
nonsense really. It rips off movies like Red Eye (many
scenes take place in the subway), The Ring (the ghost girl),
Dead Friend aka The Ghost (the climax - which worked in
that one but not in this one but I'll come back to that
later) and finally and mostly, Dark Water. It doesn't just
borrow a couple of things from Dark Water, the entire
plot really builds up in the same way with a single mother
moving into a shitty apartment with her daughter, weird
noises coming from the apartment above, creepy ghost girl
in the elevator and there's actually even a scene where
the ceiling breaks open and blood starts pouring down.
I'd also kind of like to say that it used The Eye as an
inspiration source since the mother works as an eye doctor
and has trouble seeing after she got something in her eye.
Either way, The Red Shoes is, as you can understand very
unoriginal but just like with slashers, the purpose of
these movies no longer seem to be having an original story,
it simply seems as if cheap scares and loud noises is
what's important. Well, it entertains but the concept is
simply too overdone.
Speaking of overdone, I was about to give this movie a
rating of 4/5 (yeah yeah, I'm a fan of the scares and the
eye-catching photography) until I got to the climax of
the movie. Not only does it rip off the ending from Dead
Friend quite a lot but it's also a dull mess which has
been done too many times before. I guess it's unpredictable
since even though the thought hit you that the movie could
end like that, you figure that no one would be stupid enough
to have a cheap and unoriginal climax like that. Well,
I guess I was wrong.
In the end, The Red Shoes feels like it might've been a cult
hit if it was released before all the other Asian ghost
flicks with plenty of scares and a very good atmosphere.
But the fact remains that it didn't come out before all
the other ones and it's simply too unoriginal to be really
brilliant with an ending which will bum you out.
Surprise, surprise! This was pretty nasty! We get feet cut
off (in one of the coolest opening scenes ever), an eyeball
gouged out and lots of blood splatter.
I'll have to give these guys some credits for the original
soundtrack. We get creepy organ music, sassy violins, and
some very atmosphere setting guitar music.
The Red Shoes might entertain and scare you but at the end
you kind of feel as if this was just a compilation of other
recent Asian ghost stories. It has very few original bones
in it and a movie can't survive solely on cheap scares,
eye-catching photography and lots of creepy scenes. It's
still worth checking out though for the scares.
Review By: AnthroFred
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