The Red Shoes (Yong-gyun Kim, 2005)

The Red Shoes' first impression is its confusing misnomer. The shoes are actually pink -- was this laziness on the translators' parts? Confusion? Is the Hans Christian Anderson story on which the movie is loosely based about red shoes, and could the filmmakers just not find any? In any case, these shoes appear in a specific subway station, and the woman who takes them is condemned to having those around them violently covet them. Of course, as happens in Asian horror movies, the shoes once belonged to a wronged ballerina who has come back in ghost form to haunt through these shoes for...some reason. The first half of the movie is really great -- truly atmospheric, and Kim does a great job of directing. It's beautiful and creepy, like the best kind of ghost stories should be. But in the second half, and, in particular, the last half hour, the movie falls apart, as is the fate of so many horror movies. The plot suddenly takes so many twists and turns I wasn't quite sure what was going on, and even after the final twist was revealed, I was still like, "Huh?" And not in a good way. I think the movie should have kept the focus on the family dynamics, as the main character (Hye-su Kim) and her daughter Tae-su (Yeon-ah Park) have great, realistic chemistry, and scary children are usually really creepy (both as shown in the great Korean poster - the Tartan DVD art is good, but I prefer this image). But too much is made of the ghost/back story angle, even after it seems to be resolved. Worth seeing for the first half, but don't expect too much. How long before we see an American remake, I wonder? 7/10

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