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.
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.