The Red Shoes (2005) User Reviews

It's a Big Cliché, But It's Still Damn Good!

[wkduffy · 7/10 · 27 February 2006]

I'm in a quandary over this film. Like many other reviewers have amply illustrated here, this film is like a Korean Klone in lots of ways. It borrows moves from the Ringu play-book, the Dark Water play-book, the Ju-On play-book, The Eye play-book...please stop me. It's got a daughter and mother all alone in the world facing supernatural evil. It's got hunched-over, black-haired teens with bad attitudes and osteoporosis floating around upside-down and showing up in elevators. It's got the cheating hubby, the young love interest, the entrepreneurial "young Asian professional female" slowly losing her mind. Most importantly, it's got the requisite cursed artifact (not a wig, not a videotape, not a pair of transplanted corneas, but a swanky set of pink stilettos that a particular ghost doesn't want any mortal wearing).

BUT GOSH DARN IT, I LIKED THIS FILM! I guess it says something if I feel compelled to excuse myself for this fact, but I really did care for the characters and the serious situation they are hopelessly trapped in. Indeed, I was hooked by the grue--people getting their feet forcibly removed gets my attention. The cinematography is colorful, and artful, and top notch--as we have come to expect from Korean directors. (Did you catch those cool on-purpose-out-of-focus shots? Fuzzy weirdness...) The music is actually pretty unique--the low-key guitar ditty that recurs off and on is melodic, and personal, and not overwrought. Yes, the plot "twists and turns" in terribly predictable ways: Could our protagonist really be the guilty one? Is it possible that we might find the answer to the horrible mystery by rifling through old newspaper copy in the library? Even though we've "properly buried" the red shoes with their owner, is it possible the evil will return nevertheless to wreak ultimate revenge? When we get to the end, will the decidedly downbeat narrative actually make very little sense? Yes, you've seen--and come to expect--it all.

But, darn it, this flick is done with such panache in a very gutsy way. The characters are carefully drawn, the direction is solid. And when you get right down to it, America simply does not make films like this. I don't think America ever will again. We used to make great, sad, horror films, but not anymore. We real horror fans have got to rely on films like "Bunhongsin" to get our fix. In fact, that's precisely why I give this film the benefit of the doubt.

The Curse of the Pink Shoes

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 5 October 2007]

After finding that her husband is unfaithful and cheats her with a lover, Sun-jae (Hye-su Kim) moves to a decadent cheap apartment at Goksung Station with her daughter Han Tae-soo (Yeon-ah Park). While traveling home in the subway, Sun-jae finds a pair of pink shoes and brings them home. Tae-soo becomes fascinated by the shoes, which brings greed and jealousy to whoever sees them, while Sun-jae has visions and nightmares with ghosts and blood. When her friend Kim-mi Hee steals the shoes, she has an accident and dies. Meanwhile, the architect decorator Cho-in Choi (Seong-su Kim) that is dating Sun-jae, researches and discloses that the mystery is related to a picture of 1944. His further investigation unravels the tragic fate of the original owner of the shoes.

"Bungongsin" is another creepy and scary South-Korean ghost story, with a dense atmosphere highlighted by a great cinematography and lighting and good special effects. Like in other South Korean horror movies, the final twist in the very end is quite confused but not difficult to understand: Sun-jae is the reincarnation of Oki, a ballet dancer from the 40's that was killed by the jealous Keiko, who also desired the choreographer Jun Ha-Sub that had photographed Oki with her pink shoes. Keiko stole Oki's pink shoes, but was cursed and had a tragic end. The old lady witnessed the crime, and in the present days she shows where Oki's remains are buried. In spite of returning the shoes to Oki, the curse continues and another jealous or obsessive woman will find it again. All the murders in the present days have been committed by Sun-jae. I liked the direction of Yong-gyun Kim and the performances of Hye-su Kim and the girl Yeon-ah Park, but I honestly have not identified in which fairytale from Hans Christian Andersen the story of this film is based on. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Sapatos Vermelhos" ("Red Shoes")

Nice looking, some decent moments but ultimately a let down

[GoregirlsDungeon · 6/10 · 24 September 2009]

'THE RED SHOES' is a supernatural tale with its center revolving around a pretty typical plot involving a mother alone with her daughter, struggling in the world. The reoccurring images you see in far too many Korean ghost stories are present here. There are pale faced girls with long black hair hanging in their face and cursed artifacts that bring misfortune to those that possess them. But there are enough unique touches paired with an intriguing performance by the lead actress that helps to elevate its status.

Sun-Jae unexpectedly goes home in the middle of the day to find her husband banging some other woman. She moves out on her own with her young daughter Han Tae-su to an inexpensive apartment near Goksung Station. She meets handsome young architect, In-cheol who is designing her eye clinic and the two embark on a relationship. On the subway on her way home Sun-Jae sees a seemingly abandoned pair of shoes she cannot resist picking up. The shoes bring the worst out in people, including her daughter who becomes obsessed with them on sight. When a friend is found dead and her daughters behavior becomes more severe, Sun-Jae and In-cheol will need to solve the mystery behind the cursed footwear before it's too late.

Bloody death scenes filmed in sterile white environments can be extremely effective. The opening scene of 'THE RED SHOES' is an outstanding example of this. There are some cherry props also. The main character is obsessed with shoes. The depth of the obsession is shown with a massive glass store display prop. The stacked glass boxes showcases each individual pair of shoes. The visuals are strong throughout. There are some respectable moments of suspense, but not nearly enough of them. Violence and gore is slim but I enjoyed what there was of it. The performances were strong and there is some interesting character development. I found the lead actress, Hye-su Kim fascinating. The love interest, In-cheol is very easy on the eyes. The problem is, that I liked the films individual pieces more than the completed work. I had a serious issue with certain "spooky" images. One in particular stood out because it is a carbon copy of something I've seen in at least two other films and seemed completely irrelevant to the story. Obviously added in for mood, it was totally ineffective. There are some predictable plot twists that also bog it down. The story is uneven and trips over its own feet, but ultimately for a ghost story it just isn't very scary. That said, I still think this is a really nice looking film with strong performances and enough special touches that it's worth a watch.

Shoe madness - 'psycho-subway' brand

[Chris_Docker · 6/10 · 7 August 2006]

The unrelenting power of Korean schlock horror, stunning photography, and a much revisited fairytale are the components of this colourful piece of work that goes that little bit further than the modern woman's obsession to spend a week's wages on nice footwear.

There are a few flaws - the red shoes in question, for instance, are more fuchsia pink, there is a heavy reliance on far east stock-in-trades such as hags with hair hanging over their faces to look creepy, and I was unable to resist comparing the women fighting over said shoes to hobbits fighting over a Ring; but I'll leave all those Sméagol-becomes-Gollum analogies to Lord of the Rings addicts, and tell you that Red Shoes is an overlong but ingenious dose of blood and gore, with some beautiful dance scenes and vague psychological meditations on the nature of repressed greed, vengeful ghosts, and getting your legs chopped off at the ankles.

The photography draws you in immediately. We enter a stark, brightly lit and virtual deserted subway station. The one thing that stands out are the bright 'red shoes', standing on a platform as if someone has stepped out of them onto a train. Two girls fight viciously over them. CGI's kick in nice and early with a trail of blood drawing itself up into the shoes. The second theme makes its appearance before the end of the opening titles as a ballerina goes through her beautiful and lyrical practice.

Having set the tone, people start getting bumped off as the shoes start controlling events by controlling their wearer's desires. The have a strange magical power - the protagonist's daughter suddenly becomes a much better dancer after stealing them, but the shoes are inhabited by a curse that gets a bit nasty when someone takes them from the owner. Purists can concentrate to work out which scenes are hallucinations or dream sequences and which are not, while others just lean back and enjoy the bloodletting.

We start with Sun-jae, who takes off from her wayward husband with her daughter Tae-soo. Sun-jae is an eye-doctor planning to own her own clinic, and soon strikes up a relationship with interior designer In-chul. She and her daughter fight over the shoes, which are then taken away by her friend who has an instant fancy for them. The friend has her eyeballs forked out for her trouble.

The red shoes prove very hard to get rid of, even when they find the original owner. If you lose the plot half way through, you could do worse than simply enjoy the remarkable aesthetics - the wonderful glass shoe rack, the juxtaposition of horror and beauty, the wide-screen rendition which produces some effects unusual for a horror movie, the de-saturated backgrounds, the unusual framing that sticks in the memory - the sudden overhead shot of the table when Sun-jae is having dinner with the designer, or the beautiful shot of Sun-jae and Tae-soo bathing, like something from a classical painting.

The dance digressions and occasional humour are sadly all too infrequent. "Fight quietly will you!? - the neighbours will call the police!" Or, replying to the mundane casual question, "What brand are they?" "Subway!" Instead, the constant scariness is eventually wearing. A change of pace, for instance, by developing the love-theme between Sun-jae and the designer, would have been most welcome.

Towards the end I just wanted them to hurry up and wind up dead, although I liked the shoes falling through snowflakes and (in another scene) snowflakes made of blood. A theme that could have usefully been developed further is the idea of being "in the flow" as opposed to driven out of control by temptation and desire. The interior designer is one of the few people not affected by the shoes. He will only work when he "gets the vibe" and provides an almost protective force for Sun-jae. Yet attributing too much depth of meaning to what is basically a commercial horror-flick (the end-credits are interrupted to lay a foundation for Red Shoes II) is giving it too much credit: but if the current offering is too wacky for all except hard-core horror fans, the consummate artwork speaks of great potential and talent.

The Red Shoes

[Scarecrow-88 · 7/10 · 18 September 2008]

In 1944, rivals for a man's affections, Keiko and Oki, ends tragically with a pair of pink ballerina shoes as a sort of prize for the victor through a tragic act of violence. 60 years later, the pink shoes are found by an embittered wife, Sun-jae(Hye-su Kim)who happened upon her husband having sex with another woman, on a subway train(..in the opening of this movie a girl removes the shoes from the hands of another dying horribly when her feet were somehow removed from her legs!). Moving to a rather modest, depressing flat, with daughter Tae-soo(Yeon-ah Park)in tow, Sun-jae possibly finds a new love with a kind, handsome, charming young architect, In-cheol(Seong-su Kim) constructing a new building she plans to work in. But, the shoes have such an allure so volatile that Sun-jae finds herself at odds with her own daughter over them..and there's a history(..and, especially baggage)that follows them which will truly cause nightmarish complications Sun-jae could never possibly imagine.

Like a lot of these kinds of films, there's a complete backstory behind the shoes. They symbolize the tragic repercussions of adultery which will ultimately parallel Sun-jae's own story. But, more importantly, the director establishes, subtly, the results in taking what isn't yours. In this horror tale, when one takes the pink shoes from another they literally lose the feet they wear them on. This correlates with a mistress taking a husband from a wife. In the back story, it's shown that through treacherous Oki's removal of the shoes/husband from Keiko, she prospers and succeeds, but ultimately pays the price for her thievery. Circa 2004, the same goes for how the husband allows his mistress to wear Sun-jae's shoes while making love. But, there's another interesting twist that occurs between Tae-soo and Sun-jae regarding the fulfilling of roles with the shoes as a supernatural catalyst. This is a downer of a movie, I must tell you. We see how the tragedies of the past come back to haunt characters in the present. The ending, regarding the fates of those at the hands of Sun-jae, motivated by *another*, certainly left me stunned. Perhaps, it'll have the same effect with you.

It seems that this film is interpreted by people differently, so I could be absolutely wrong with my assessment with this film. Some believe that Sun-jae is one of many characters. These theories give me a head ache, so see for yourself.

Nicely filmed, but overlong, and frankly not frightening

[hoggaglust-1 · 4/10 · 14 August 2007]

Recently, there is much criticism aimed at a seemingly stagnant Asian Horror market, with increasing remarks that the genre has run out of ideas with more and more modern releases stealing blatantly from other, more successful films such as The Ring, Ju-On and Dark Water.

Whilst The Red Shoes isn't exactly an exercise in originality, 'borrowing' ideas is not the problem here. Yes, there are similarities with other movies mentioned above; we indeed have a single mother and young daughter relationship at the film's core, yes, they have a penchant for renting a dirty, run down apartment and yes, we have a cursed inanimate object - or objects - (the eponymous shoes) that reek havoc on those who encounter them.

We also have atmospheric, claustrophobic cinematography; (although epileptics should be aware that there are more flashing neons here than in an 80's themed disco). We also have decent acting, but much of this is style over substance. The film takes itself deadly seriously, but the concept of haunted footwear just plain isn't frightening.

With The Ring, the curse spread through various copies of the video-tape, but in order for the curse to spread here, we have to endure scenes of histrionic screaming women and girls trying to steal the shoes from each other at various times of the day/night - the whole thing just seems so unlikely. Not content to lend the shoes an air of supernatural mystery, the film-makers also 'treat' us to some pretty looking, but ultimately distracting and too frequent flash-backs where the shoes supposedly tragic (but ultimately dull) history is revealed.

Finally, The Red Shoes also falls very short in the scares. I watched it twice, alone, and not one of the film's attempts to chill/shock or scare me worked. All in all, The Red Shoes will prove a bitter (and expensive at £20.00) disappointment to fans of horror, who like me, expect - if not originality, then at least to be frightened.

My shoes could beat up your shoes!

[Ky-D · 7/10 · 25 September 2005]

'Bunhongshin' (Pink Shoes) is a fine example of the growing Korean film industry. While still lacking enough refinements for universal appeal, it still is an entertaining yarn and a fine scary movie.

A pair of bright pink shoes keep popping up on a subway line. For inexplicable reasons, any girl who sees them becomes violently attached to the shoes (to the point of beating anyone who might touch them), that is until someone/thing comes along and severs the girls feet as a penance for wearing the garment.

Visually top-notch, with nice color and camera usage. Most notable are the scare scenes; the imagery in these scenes is creepy and effective in conveying dread. Some limited optical effects and CG round out the package.

Performance wise, it's a mixed bag and where the film takes the biggest hit. Acting is suffice, but nothing special. The story just doesn't work; it is not only disjointed and uninvolved, it's also just plain difficult to understand what the hell happened in the end. As is the norm for many Korean film, the pacing is all kinds of wrong; taking way too long to make a point and dragging on way too many scenes needlessly.

For the spot-on horror imagery, 'Bunhongshin' is one to look out for, just try to ignore the scripting and pacing issues.

7/10

Hooray for the beginning and Yawn for the rest

[dschmeding · 3/10 · 7 June 2008]

The trailer to this Korean movie looked promising and honestly when the movie started I was thrilled. Two girls fight over a pair of shoes in a subway where they found the abandoned shoes. One gets left behind, the other walks through endless corridors wearing her new shoes with pride but you know something is wrong when she hears footsteps around her. Cinematography is awesome with washed out colors, blurry areas making you focus on certain elements and the pink shoes over-saturated and shining. Awesome... when the girl wakes up to find the shoes and feet gone screaming in a puddle of blood I thought this will be a good one for sure. But it wasn't. "The red shoes" is a totally incoherent mess of story telling, mixing several ideas of Asian ghost movies like dark-haired girls, bloody eyes, creepy elevator rides and endless creepy corridors in for the horror audience. Otherwise the movie is slow, way too long and mixing loads of element in a fashion that to me made absolutely no sense in the end. Basically the movie continues with a woman and her daughter Tae-Soo (I will never forget that name because her mother screams and cries her name like a million times throughout this movie which gets really annoying after a while) who separate from their father who has an affair. They move into a new apartment to live on their own, the woman finds the pink shoes on a subway ride and things start to get strange including many flashbacks melting the plot together with the opening. From here on its all about her and her daughter, both beginning to be obsessed with the shoes, an architect who builds her new bureau and gets into her life and the resulting love story. People die, flashbacks show to a back story about a murder involving the shoes and vengeful ghosts. There are both creepy and beautiful moments, especially on the visual side but the mix of flashbacks gets pretty torn up and in the end you think they didn't want to end the movie because you get like three ends piled upon another. The movie is pretty hard to understand and I think its because the script is a mess.. many things happen without explanation (the birds, the blood dripping from sky and ceiling several times, the idiotic newspaper ad and internet story...). If the story was that complex and psychological they sure wouldn't end the movie with pink shoes standing somewhere and another woman reaching to take them. I would have expected such ending in any stupid slashed movie but not in this one. "The red shoes" is loosely based on the Andersen story mixing in some typical Asian ghost elements, love story and psychological elements. To me it totally fails except for some nice scares. A real big let down after such a strong beginning and another proof that sometimes less is way more.

Not One Of My Favorite Dark Fairy Tales But Still Good

[Foutainoflife · 7/10 · 28 September 2018]

This is a decent adaptation of this particular fairy tale. It is about having something offered to you that you shouldn't take, aren't forced to take but by overwhelming compulsion, you take it anyway. This leads to disastrous problems because once you indulge, the item has literally become a part of you that you simply cannot get rid of easily.

I liked this for the most part. I thought the acting. costuming and effects were done well. There were some scenes that were a bit dark and that sorta bugged me. I just felt like I couldn't see enough. Nice little horror movie.

Not too bad Korean horror film....

[MovieGuy01 · 4/10 · 6 December 2009]

I have just watched the Korean horror film The Red Shoes, and i thought that it was not too bad, but i have seen much better Asian horror films. It is about a woman called Sun-jae, whose husband is unfaithful and cheats on her with a lover, Sun-jae moves to a cheap apartment at Goksung Station, with her daughter Han Tae-soo. While she is travelling back home in the subway, Sun-jae finds a pair of pink shoes and brings them home with her. Her daughter Han Tae-soo starts to become fascinated by the shoes, that her mother has bought. but they bring greed and jealousy to whoever sees them, Sun-jae starts to have visions and nightmares about ghosts and blood. When her friend Kim-mi Hee steals the shoes, she has an accident and dies. She finds out that the of pink shoes that she found on a subway platform seems to bring a curse on whoever wears them. And rips them from the owners feet and taking the owners feet with them. Sun-jae tries to find out what is causing the curse to happen. i found this horror film to be not to bad to watch 4/10

Actually....

[witchcraftpentagrams · 10/10 · 23 November 2007]

Yeah sure they are pink shoes but its a metaphor. They are "red" because of all the blood and gore and stuff. Get it. Anyway this movie is excellent. It is definitely not what i expected. It is surprisingly emotional, sad and beautiful. There is lots if disgusting blood and gore thats for sure and its the goriest part in the first subway scene. This movie also has an interesting story line based in the hans Christian anderson tale "the red shoes". It also has the first sex scene sort of thing i have ever seen in an Asian film. It will haunt my dreams forever. It has fights between the mother and the 5 year old daughter which makes you just want to scream at the screen STOP. because it is such good acting. It is so horrible in a good way that they would hurt and kill each others family just to have the shoes.

A Pair of Pink shoes found on a subway car by a lonely single mother turns her life into a horrible blood bath!

[nhayashigawa · 7/10 · 17 November 2005]

I saw this film at the AFI fest and Loved it. The shots were stunning. Beautiful composition and cinematography

I did however give this film a mere 7, and the reason for that is the extensive use of orchestra hits used as a gimmick to startle the audience. This was fine for the first five minutes, but after the twentieth time, I was getting kind of annoyed. THERE ARE TOO MANY!! Honestly i believe that the images are intense enough and the excessive use of music is unnecessary. If you're going to watch this movie, watch it on mute. The images are the best part of it. But as my world cinema instructor would say, "That's all that matters."

Nothing ordinary but still decent

[aronharde · 5/10 · 4 November 2023]

The Red Shoes (2005), not to be confused with the 1948 drama romance movie is a brutal South-Korean horror flick about a pair of high heels who's owner is followed by jealousy, greed and death. Unlike the title should suggests these red shoes are in fact pink high heels but that could be seen as a metaphor for all the blood it is responsible for. You see our protagonist spiraling down into madness while people around her try to claim these shoes are getting punished with a brutal death.

It's your typical run of the mill haunted item horror movie with nothing too spectacular or special to differentiate the movie from others. Even though its stylish and definitely has some brutal scenes with great makeup effects the movie overall ended up to be very average. We have seen similar movies before and this movie definitely will find its audience somewhere but overall I don't think it's a movie to be remembered. Still a decent watch for you if you enjoy creepy Asian supernatural horror movies. [5,2/10]

Avoid this movie!

[lovedtohate · 31 July 2014]

I've read people complaining about the shoes being pink (they're magenta/fuchsia to be precise) instead of red, I'm more concerned about the fact that those shoes aren't made for ballet, not even flamenco shoes have heels that high, they don't even look like a pair of shoes you could find in the 40s (but I might be wrong on this) and I wish this was the only problem about this movie! This movie is all about clichés, plot holes and bad written twists. It mixes the classic Red shoes tale with the basic revenge-themed ghost stories, but it does it wrong and makes no sense at all. This movie will only give you a headache for trying to find some kind of logic in this mediocrity award winning piece of @#?!. If you're looking for a well scripted movie this is not the case.

The Red Shoes

[a_baron · 7/10 · 8 January 2015]

Whether or not this is indeed based loosely on the grotesque fairy tale of the same name, "The Red Shoes" is a bizarre offering, even for the Korean cinema.

After catching her husband in flagrante delicto, a woman walks out on him taking her precocious young daughter with her, who is being hot-housed in traditional Oriental fashion, attending dancing classes in this case.

Their new home is very downmarket, although she can afford an interior designer to spruce it up for her, and it isn't only her apartment he has designs for.

Then there is the little matter of the actual red shoes. Her daughter appears to be fascinated by them, and she isn't the only one, but they leave a trail of death and destruction wherever they walk.

As with not a few films in especially the horror genre, the use or rather the abuse of the dream sequence leaves much to be desired, but there is a twist, perhaps the shoes are not that significant at all? Its resolution somewhat reminiscent of "Angel Heart", and the heroine faces a similar fate, deservedly so, apparently.

Interesting but...

[borgolarici · 7/10 · 10 April 2021]

We have a pair of bold pink shoes and they seem to have an interesting power: they bring out the the worst violent, obsessive and jealous tendencies in the women who wear them.

While there is a backstory for these shoes, elegantly set during the Japanese occupation, it's more interesting to see how they highlight toxic dynamics between women: rivalry between mother and daughter, wife and lover, married and single friends. I think that this aspect should have been explored more.

Tell me what you know

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 11 May 2022]

Sun-jae (Kim Hye-su) after leaving her husband with her daughter Tae-Soo finds a pair of heels at the subway station. She takes them home with her and tussles with her daughter who wants to take ownership. We know the previous owner lost her feet wearing them.

This is a Korean film I watched with subtitles. An hour into the film it starts to work on the back story of the shoes. The plot seemed incomplete and the horror was lighter than I expected from an Asian Extreme. The color of the shoes is not really red, more of a magenta. Maybe Korea doesn't have a word for magenta.

Guide: No swearing or nudity. Implied sex.

Watch out for the strobe lights.

[el7 · 7/10 · 3 October 2020]

This movie features a number of scenes where fluorescent lights flicker rapidly and repeatedly, usually either to highlight a character's dual nature or to set up a scare, but it often creates a strobe effect that could be a problem for anyone who is photosensitive.

The Red Shoes explores the damaging power of obsessive love through a vengeful ghost story centered around a pair of haunted shoes. As other reviewers have mentioned, these shoes are dark pink -- at least to Western eyes. In many Asian cultures they'd actually be considered a light shade of red. Every time a character sees the shoes they seem at least momentarily overcome. Even the male characters can't help staring, though they don't seem to be compelled to possess the shoes to the same great extent that the female characters do. It's weird how every female character who puts on the shoes doesn't have any trouble getting them to fit. Even the little girl is able to slide around in them without tripping. I'll chalk that one up to supernatural shenanigans. Also, while the high heeled pumps would definitely not be standard wear for a classical ballet dancer, for the modern dance that was popular at the time of this tale's backstory they'd be close enough to hand-wave.

After a cold open, the story begins with Sun-Jae, who appears to be a long-suffering wife and mother to a husband who has lost interest in her and a daddy's girl daughter who takes her for granted. And she is both of those things, but she's also got some attachment issues. After she discovers her husband cheating on her with a brazen hussy who dared to put on her blue high heels and wear them during sex while her husband told her they looked better on her than on his wife (the gall!), she leaves their nice house with her daughter and moves into a dump of a highrise apartment. So far, so Dark Water.

Sun-Jae is planning to open her own eye clinic, and has hired a hot interior designer to help her fix the place up. Sparks fly between them. Sun-Jae also has a spunky best friend Mi-Hee and it seems like the set up to a rom com is happening, until Sun-Jae spots the red shoes on the subway. Soon everybody is fighting. Sun-Jae is fighting with her little daughter Tae-Su over ownership of the shoes. Mi-Hee is stealing the shoes from Tae-Su. Sun-Jae and her new boyfriend In-Cheol are arguing about their DTR. The old bag lady who lives in the basement is screaming and running away every time she sees Sun-Jae coming. Also, ghosts start appearing, usually in that way where they're staring balefully at a character who's not looking in their direction.

Eventually the gore comes, and it comes with giallo vividness. The cinematography is striking, with the scenery around the red often desaturated to make the red stand out more. There's the research and recriminations section of the movie, which is a defining trope of the genre. The viewer might start wondering how likely it is that so many people and places central to the background mystery happen to be right there in that building, but then the twist happens and you realize that it's not a coincidence at all. I won't spoil the twist except to say that it's less about the shoes than it is about the people. The movie is a little skimpy on scares but it's big on style and it's a compelling take on how obsessive love can drive a person mad.

Aggressively Unpleasant

[saltsan · 2/10 · 2 May 2017]

I love a good horror film, including a number of Asian titles from the last twenty years or so, but this seemed like a butchered version of what was meant to be a longer film. (No cause and effect, unclear motivation, difficult chronology.) It made very little sense to me (maybe if I was Korean, it would have made more sense, but I have my doubts.) The main character and her daughter are also two of the most annoying characters I've seen on film in the last few years: screaming at each other constantly... angry... petulant. I wanted them both dead half an hour in. There are some nice visuals here and there (and the male lead has some charisma), but to be honest, I barely made it through this utter mess of a film.

A classic opening (yes it is that good) and some truly unsettling imagery get lost in a story that fails to pull it together in the end

[dbborroughs · 6/10 · 7 May 2009]

Actually they are more shocking pink, but the tale of obsession and possession and madness starts (after a killer opening) when a woman discovers her husband is having an affair. She moves out with her daughter into a new apartment. She discovers a pair of pink shoes on a subway and its all down hill from there.

Dark, bloody (its rains down in gallons) disturbing film is a good thriller for most of its running time. The dark imagery is truly frightening and disturbing even if the tale, ultimately, makes no sense. There are things in this film that really bothered me even if they may have been over done. Visually this film is great, it will curl your toes at times (The opening in the subway is truly classic and one of the best things I've seen all year. I've seen it a couple of times it still delightfully, freaks me out). The story, which echoes the classic story and events decades earlier in the films time line, really doesn't work. The problem is that as long as it doesn't have to explain anything this film is fine, however once it has to begin to wrap everything up it stops working. Its juggling too many implausible things to explain neatly. I like the pieces of this film much better than the whole thing.

For those looking for an Asian Horror film that isn't long haired ghosts this film is worth a look (You want to see the opening). I'd rent it or see if cable runs it before you buy it.

Nothing extraordinary to be found here...

[paul_haakonsen · 4/10 · 24 December 2015]

First of all I must say that I am puzzled about the statement on the DVD cover; 'genuinely creepy' and 'ghostly disturbing, violent and bloody' The Red Shoes is one of the year's must-see horror films'. I just wonder if I actually watched the same movie as whomever had written that.

The story is about a pair of haunted red shoes - yeah, exactly. Enough said! The storyline was a tad too silly for me and the entire movie was just lacking a proper red line throughout the entire storyline.

The movie wasn't spooky or scary, and it managed to stay afloat and pass as semi-watchable because of the acting performances put on by the cast. But the performances couldn't really manage to lift up the movie because the story was lacking the all-important spice. And as such, this movie was a below average experience.

South Korea do manage to put some really great horror movies out there, but "The Red Shoes" (aka "Bunhongsin") just wasn't one such occurrence.

An effective, beautifully executed horror film

[artemis0302 · 8/10 · 15 January 2006]

Sun-jae is a woman who leads a happy life: her daughter Tae-soo is learning ballet, her husband is kind and loving, she has a decent job, etc. That's all shattered once she finds her husband with another woman... Sun-jae splits, along with her daughter, and they move into a decrepit, old apartment complex. They try to live life normally, but their new "home" gets in the way, and the crazy old hag living around the building isn't helping much. One night, while riding the subway, Sun-jae finds a pair of red (okay, *pink*) shoes. She brings them home, but she doesn't realize that along with the shoes comes greed, obsession, murder, and a terrible curse bound to destroy Sun-jae's life.

I was immensely surprised by "The Red Shoes". The first thing I noticed was it's appearance: as with many South Korean horror films, the photography and visuals are incredibly breathtaking, and the music is equally great. The acting is also very high quality: Hye-soo Kim plays her character very well, showing how Sun-jae's mind is quickly deteriorating and becoming obsessed; Yeon-ah Park as the adorable Tae-soo is especially impressive, you can really tell she put in an amazing effort. All the other actors did a great job also.

Now to -in my opinion- the film's only flaw: it lacks originality. The scares are effective, there's a great Gothic creepy atmosphere, but it doesn't have many original scares. Haven't we seen the long-haired-ghost-with-back-problem too many times? What about the loud noises as jumps? We've seen a lot of it before, the only real originality in the scares is in the creative death scenes.

But, if you're not tired of the long-haired ghost story yet (like me), you'll love this.

My rating: 8/10.

A gem of South Korean horror, but not in a good way

[SyoKennex · 6/10 · 16 April 2019]

South Korean horror is an entire minefield of either being a complete miss and a snooze fest, or they are absolutely stunning and keep you thinking for hours or even days afterwards. Rarely, you come across these gems that are interesting and exciting in a more thriller type way than horror; they're not absolutely blow your mind amazing movies, but they also aren't going to put you to sleep with a pathetic excuse of a plot line.

The Red Shoes is one of those rare, not quite a hit but definitely not a miss movies.

At first, this movie held me with a lot of intrigues. Based on the original fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson where beautiful red ballet slippers will force the wearer to dance until they die or to cut their own feet/legs off in an attempt at survival, I was highly excited to see where this film took that original line. With the number of remakes and basic plot rip-offs of 'The Red Shoes', I was excited to see a film that took the premise but made it original for once. With some parts, inherently the same as the story and others completely changed around to make it the director's own. Kim Yong-gyun has definitely succeeded in making something on this. I was whisked away into the whole new world of the red shoes story. I found myself gripped and gasping for a lot of the first half of this film.

The acting was stunning, from all the actors and actresses. I want to give a big shout out to Park Yeon-ah and Kim Hye-soo who play the films prevalent mother-daughter combo. They were convincing, there wasn't a moment I doubted these characters weren't real and weren't living through this on the other side of the world. I cannot fault any of the cast in this film and the main and support role actors, I will definitely be watching more of their filmographies just from their performance in this film.

However, I have a couple of complaints about The Red Shoes as much as I have praise for it.

Firstly - and this sounds nitpicking and petty - but the shoes aren't even red. They're a magenta, some would even argue a pale pink in some of the lightings. Now, I understand that this was a choice based on Kim Yong-gyun's decisions to make the film his own. I'm not against it, I quite liked that choice to take it one further step away from Anderson's story and to make it into Yong-gyun's story. The reason I have an issue with this mainly is that keeping the title and such as it was, as "The Red Shoes", looks to me that they were relying on the name of the original story to fill out theatres a bit more. Again, that's fair and it's a commonly used marketing strategy with some films like this. However, it feels a little to me as though they might have been doubting the film's ability to stand on its own without that basis. This could have easily been named The Pink Shoes and been its own story without the comparison to Anderson's story; it would be similar, but wouldn't have been fully linked. This is more of a personal grievance and it doesn't really affect much within the movie, but it did make my eye twitch a few times through the film - each to their own pleasures and grievances, I suppose.

My second issue with The Red Shoes was that... this isn't a horror film. Yes, there are parts of it that are genuinely scary. There are parts of this that only fit into the horror genre aspect. However, when it came down to it, it really wasn't so scary. As a horror fanatic, this kind of horror is just "infantile" for a lack of better word. This is the horror that directors make to appeal to NON-horror fans rather than horror fans themselves. Word spreads, people who are easier scared go to see the film, they pass on word of mouth, etc; whilst horror fans find themselves struggling to sit through the entire film. This is much more of a bloody slasher thriller than it is a supernatural horror - and it's painfully obvious that Yong-gyun was aiming for supernatural horror, not a gory thriller. This film used so many cliches that are ripped from successful films before it of it's attempted genre that it's almost laughable.

This all being said - I did enjoy it to a degree. I think the idea and the plot line was refreshing. I think the acting was spot on. I liked the twists in the story much more than I have a lot of horror plot twists. However, I feel like this lacked in just as much as it did well.

If you aren't such a massive horror fan, then this will probably be a terrifying film to you, or will definitely make you quite paranoid about what shoes you're trying on. If you are a die-hard horror fan like myself, I think the only reason you should really watch this is that it has a refreshing new take on a fairy tale that's been used in so many horror mediums before. I appreciate Yong-gyun's efforts with this film, I do, but he missed the mark quite severely on quite a few things. I wish my rating could be higher, but there's too much lag for me to consider an extra half a star or two.

The director seems to have tried, but didn't quite make it through

[KineticSeoul · 5/10 · 23 April 2010]

Okay so the curse of this film is about the red shoes(yeah I know they are pink actually, but it's called the red shoes because it's symbolic of all the bloodshed it causes) draws women into taking it. Whoever first finds it, keeps it and gets the wonderful feeling of youth, but whoever else gets lured into the shoe's spell will get the urge to steals it and feel the power of youth and will die. As the movie progresses it shoes the origin of how it started, this comes from the flashback of the old era of Japan, when the happy Japanese girl with the red shoes was with a man and happy but the other women glaring, was wanting to steal the shoe and back in present time who ever steals the shoes away from someone over greed will end up dying. This is a pretty generic horror flick with ghost in it, and it depends way too much on the pop up scare for the scare factor which is okay I guess in some cases but it's just not that effective in this. You also don't care for the victims, especially the daughter because they are all pretty annoying and as heartless as it may seem, I really did not care if the daughter died. As a matter of fact I was hoping something bad happens to her cause she was the most annoying character throughout the whole film, well until it almost got to the end which was the only part that was a bit interesting, not original however. I could tell the director actually tried with the material he had, but he didn't manage to pull through, and the pop up scares are one thing but it also has way too many dream sequences to the point you get numb to it, plus the pop up scares are not scary and can be humorous sometimes. And there is some obvious plot holes that doesn't make any sense sometimes, nothing about this is effective and it just basically borrows a heck load off from other horror flicks. The cinematography was well done though, and brings out a bit of eerie atmosphere because of it. It would have been better if at least some of the twist and turns weren't so predictable, but despite that it's still better than a lot of American horror movies.

5/10

Gory, exaggerated hogwash thinly disguised as "psychological thriller"

[Tubular_Bell · 3/10 · 9 September 2012]

If you could imagine all of the Asian horror clichés thrown into a single film, then with every single aspect cranked up to 11 without any cleverness or reason, you'd get a pretty bad film. Make it a couple of notches worse and you'd almost get The Red Shoes. There is absolutely no cleverness, no wit, no intelligence behind this film. Everything is exaggerated and amplified to the point where nothing is tied together, and every opportunity for gratuitous gore and violence thrown under the excuse of "psychological thriller" is used. The film is so over-the-top that it could be passed off as an acid, mean-spirited satire of Asian horror with perhaps a few small changes.

The film manages something impressive: while it shows absolutely no restraint in terms of jump scares, gore shots and blood gushing, the film isn't really unpredictable, and the story as a whole follows every single rule in the book. Everything is there. It's even worse than Avatar in terms of following the conventions. And you can't even use the argument that "the visuals are pretty" here, because everything is so in-your-face, it's downright tragic: the monochromatic shots, the blurriness, the uncomfortable close-ups, the occasional Shaky-Cam, and so on and on. Just avoid this film. Even if you're genuinely scared by horror films, go pick something better.