Cinderella (2006)

cinderella poster

For as far back as I can remember I have loved horror movies. Growing up in the 80s I can remember begging my mother to let me see the slasher films of Freddie Kreuger, Jason, and Michael Myers. Mostly she said no, but I still managed to catch them on late-night cable TV. Later the voyeuristic, sick pleasures of real death films like Faces of Death became something of an underground scene at my school. In the decades since that time, I have continued in my love for horror and gore.

The slasher film seemed to go out of style sometime in the early 90s but came back in vogue a few years later with Scream and its winking, ironic sensibilities. Now we’ve got Asian horror and its significant lack of naked breasts but with plenty of extreme violence. This brings us to Cinderella.

I’m not exactly sure why this film is called Cinderella as there is nary a Prince Charming, a mouse, nor a pumpkin carriage to be found, but there is enough dark moodiness to have Cinderella and her stepsisters screaming for mercy.

The story revolves around Hyun-soo (Shin Se-Kyung) and her mother, Yoon-hee (Do Ji-Won), a plastic surgeon. Dear old Dr. Mom performs facelifts for all of Hyun-soo’s friends who are obsessed with ul-jjang (the ideal beauty), but before long things start going horribly wrong. The face-lifted friends begin having weird visions of their faces being clawed off, which leads them to do some pretty nasty stuff to themselves.

Hyun-soo also begins having visions that her face is a horrible wreck, and she hears voices claiming her own face is someone else’s.

The film is loaded with mood. Shadows abound, and unknown dark faces linger just out of focus in the background. Voices whisper strange and haunting things throughout. As an audience, we’re never quite sure what is going on at any time, but we can be pretty sure it’s eerie.

There are a few Asian horror movie clichés, and to be sure you see more than a few long black-haired girls creeping along. In the end, it feels more like a Romantic era melodrama than a horror film, but for what it lacks in originality and gore it makes up for in mood and social commentary.

Yeah, that’s right, I said social commentary. The film has a great deal to say about our perception of beauty and the extremes we will go through to achieve them. Hyun-soo and her friends, who have all undergone some form of cosmetic surgery, are young students. They haven’t really formed concrete personalities but are more than willing to change their appearance surgically to gain some warped sense of beauty.

In one chilling scene, two girls begin slicing their faces open with sculpting knives all the while whispering “I’ll make you pretty.” This mantra is repeated throughout the film. All anyone seems to care about is his or her physical beauty, and they are willing to do just about anything to achieve it. Take a quick look at our own magazines and television commercials it’s not hard to see how such a warped perception could easily be believed.

Unfortunately in its attempts to be a horror film, a melodrama, and a social commentary, the film falls a little short in all categories. It is stretched just a little too thin to be completely satisfying as any of them, yet it provides enough of each to make it well worth watching.

The Red Shoes (2005)

the red shoes

I suppose it is only natural that Asian horror should become as trite and bloated as its American counterparts. Eventually, they will most assuredly start aping themselves – mining their old material for what struck gold – and trying to recreate the old magic, only to fail miserably.

The Red Shoes isn’t as bad as all that, but it sure feels like a movie made upon audience testing and computer printouts of what has made the genre such a popular thing. It contains just about everything a good Asian horror movie should.

Inanimate objects that take on creepy spiritual significance? Check

A young child becomes enamored and endangered by said object? Check

Single mom recently divorced, living in a dilapidated and perhaps haunted apartment? Check.

Gruesome, unexplained murders? Check

Gruesome, unexplained murder that went unrevenged? Check

Long, black-haired

girl in desperate need of a chiropractor? Check

Buckets of blood? Double check.

Yet for all the textbook reasons why it should be an excellent creep-o-rama, it never really manages to pull itself off. At least part of the reason why Asian horror has become so successful both financially and artistically is that it managed to take a haggard genre and revitalize it with freshness. The Red Shoes does nothing new, but takes what has worked in the past and redoes it.

For all that, it’s not half bad. The production values are quite excellent and it does steal from some of the best horror movies this decade so I guess it would have to be pretty good. It’s the type of thing where had I not seen all of the films it rips off I’d probably have loved it.

Let’s slip into the plot for a moment. Sun-jae (Hye-su Kim) catches her boorish husband boinking some girl and decides to take herself and daughter Tae-su (Yeon-ah Park) away from the adulterer and they move into a run-down old apartment (did somebody say Dark Water?)

Later, Sun-jae finds a pair of pink shoes (I know the flick is called Red Shoes but the shoes are most definitely pink – this is either a bad translation or a literary device – they’re red because of all the blood! – get it?!?) and she takes the shoes home. Before she knows it she is attached to those shoes enough to get violently angry with anyone, including Tae-su who tries to touch them. (Inanimate object takes on spooky personality – did anyone see Ringu, the Ring, or the Ring Virus?)

Sun-jae’s friend gets a hankering for some pink –er red – shoes and steals them. Quickly she meets a bloody end. There are obligatory flashbacks showing why the shoes are now evil (I’ll only say the previous owner never got proper revenge, and so the shoe’s soul (get it?) must take that revenge on themselves.) Along the way, we get homages (or rip-offs) of The Eye, Ju-On, the Ring series, Dark Water, and just about every Asian horror film I’ve seen.

Like most Asian cinema the lighting is eerie and very well done. The acting hits all its cylinders and most of the production qualities are quite good. It just isn’t particularly original which makes it kind of a bore.

It’s just plain difficult to muster up any fear over a pair of pink heels. You might say the same thing over a television set, but for anyone who’s ever watched Mama’s Family you know that TV can be as scary as hell. But pink freaking shoes, there ain’t nothing horrifying about that, except maybe bad taste.

It is a good introductory film for Asian horror as it takes a lot of what works and applies it to one picture. But for anyone who has spent a good amount of time with Miike, Park, and Nakata, then the Red Shoes will feel a little too been there, done that.

Audition (1999)

audition poster

Audition is a peculiar type of horror film. It is not the violent, gorefest that you might expect from the new stream of Japanese horror films, and certainly not from Takashi Miike, director of such bloodfests as Ichi the Killer and Full Metal Yakuza. It is also not the suspenseful, scare them with what you don’t see the type of horror film that Alfred Hitchcock might make.

In fact, for the first 2/3s of the movie, it is more akin to a family drama than anything you’d call horror. The plot concerns a middle-aged widow, Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), who is encouraged by his teenage son to start dating again. Not knowing how to go about this, he decides to hold auditions for his new wife. Real-life auditions, like you, ’d do in hiring actors for a movie.

Lots of women show up and are interviewed for the lifelong role of wife. Aoyama is intrigued by one woman, Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), and begins to date her. Eventually, we find that Yamazaki is not all who she seems to be and thus the horror begins.

Miike’s ability to turn the conventions of an old romantic formula completely on its head is nothing short of masterful. Watching the first thirty minutes or so of the film, you would have no idea that horrible, bloody things were going to take place later on. Had I not known what to expect from a Miike film, I would have thought I was watching an old-style romance.

Yamazaki at first seems like a natural mate, she is beautiful, sweet, and shy. Miike lets the twist in her character come in slow, short, and shocking bursts. The screw tightens and the horror grows.

The gore is actually pretty minimal, but when the horror comes it comes quick and merciless.

Asian extreme horror is not for everybody. The blood and the gore are too much for a wide audience. But for those with the proper stomachs, Takashi Miike is a master and Audition is one of his best.