The Red Shoes (2005) Bunhongsin

Movie Rating NR Contains: Violence Graphic Violence Gore Sex Mature Situations

Director: Kim Yong-gyun Movie Genre: Horror, Thriller Country: South Korea The Red Shoes Score Card The following scores are based on a 0.0 to 10.0 rating scale Hover your mouse pointer over the name of each scoring category below for a description Direction: 6.8 Writing: 6.6 Acting: 6.8 Cinematography: 7.0 Sound and Score: 8.1 Functionality: 8.8 Presentation: 8.8 Genre Comparison: 7.8 General Comparison: 6.2 Overall: 7.4 Reviewed 2006-12-07 02:13:08

The Red Shoes is a Korean horror movie loosely based on the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale of the same name. This story is about Sun-jae, a young woman with a penchant for elegant shoes. Her life spirals out of control after she finds a nice pair of pink high-heeled shoes on a subway platform. Everyone that sees Sun-jae's new shoes instantly becomes obsessed with them and tries at all costs to take them away from her. Sun-jae's friends and family quickly find out that trying to take the shoes away from her has horrific consequences, almost as if the shoes themselves had chosen Sun-jae to be their owner.

Perhaps the most noticeable quality of this movie is its score. Lee Byung-woo's music is haunting and perfectly matched with the atmosphere of this film. There are several scenes where the score is the scariest element and if the scene were silent, it would be completely harmless. In other horror movies, sudden, jarring noises in the score are coupled with sharp camera cuts to startle the audience which is ineffective and amateurish. In The Red Shoes this technique is used so well that it is nearly impossible to watch this movie and not jump at least once.

The production design by Lim Hyung-tae and Jang Pak-ha is equally as important as the music. The sets are dark and the light that is present in the sets is mainly fluorescent. This gives the movie a cold, helpless feel that subtly helps the audience to identify with the victims. The titular red shoes are actually more of a pink color throughout the majority of the film. Whenever the shoes claim a victim, they turn a shade of red that is so bright and vibrant that they seem to glow. This change mirrors the intensity of the scene and gives the shoes an ominous quality that adds a great deal to the experience of this film.

It is true that a lot of the scare tactics in The Red Shoes have been done before. This movie even has the obligatory ghost girl with long black hair that plagues so many Asian horror films. Very seldom does a movie come along that can use all of the standard techniques so effectively that their derivative nature is largely overlooked. Kim Yong-gyun's The Red Shoes is a perfect example of well-done Asian horror and is a movie where the whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts.