Slaughter Night (SL8N8) (2006)

slaughter night postert

The concept of adding critical blurbs to a movie poster, or DVD case is fascinating to me. PR people are able to take heated, loathing, and scathing reviews, pluck out one or two words (out of context), and make the worst movie sound like the greatest thing to ever hit the cinemas.

It was with this thought in my mind that I came to Slaughter Night, a movie so glorious that the only blurb they could find for its DVD cover is “A Whole Lot of Gore.” That’s it. Nothing about how amazing the director is, or how the story is new, fresh, or superb.

Gore. A whole lot of gore. I knew I was in for a treat then.

Hoping that maybe it was mainstream cinema that was finding this little Dutch slasher film a touch too nasty, I went to IMBD in search of fan-boy reviews. The summaries there were a little better. No one was raving about it, but the opinion was that the slashing was good and the story above par.

I should have listened to the cover.

Slaughter Night starts out with a bang. We’re treated to a flashback where some unseen psycho-killer has several kids trapped in an old house. Outside we see what must be police officers sneaking up to the house to save the day. But the killer continues on and before the kids can be rescued he slices off their heads and puts them on pikes. Save but one. Not exactly something to watch with Mom, but a pretty exciting way to start a horror flick.

Flash forward and we find Kristel (Victoria Koblenko)arguing with her father about dropping out of school to travel the world. Father figures she’s a smart kid and ought to stick it out, but before we can conclude the argument we’re treated to a pretty harrowing accident that made me think this was one of those new, terrible car commercials.

Kristel and her gang travel to Belgium to pick up a few of her father’s things. Seems he was working on a book that involved a local mining operation. He was especially interested in Andries Martiens (Robert Eleveld), the killer from the beginning of the flick. You see back in olden times, psycho-killers were given the opportunity to free themselves by taking on insanely dangerous missions underground. They were to detect explosive gasses in the mines, ignite them, and if they survived the explosion they were free to go. Apparently, Martiens was given such a deal, and it ended poorly. Dead underground, he now supposedly haunts the abandoned mines. At least this is what the mine tour guides like to say to scare the tourists with.

Of course, being a horror movie, the ghost is real, and he’s mad as hell.

Of course, our heroes take a tour underground.

Of course, bad things happen.

Slaughter Night is pretty by the books in terms of plot. From the opening murder, we know that baddie is going to be back. Once the cave comes into view, we know our characters are going down, and most of them will be whacked. In the end, we know the killer will be killed. That’s not even a spoiler for this type of film. In slasher films, the plot is usually irrelevant anyway. It’s the style that counts.

While Slaughter Night tries to give us plenty of style, it mostly falls flat. During the scary scenes, the director uses hand-held cameras that shake and move all over the place. This type of shaky cam seems to be in vogue these days with nearly everyone using it to create “mood.” Sometimes it’s effective as in films like Saving Private Ryan or United 93. Here it just distracts. It is especially annoying because the camera shakes violently during the death scenes, obscuring most of the gore. And what’s the point of watching a slasher flick if you can’t see all the slashing?

The lighting is also so murky you can hardly see the characters. Yes, it is in a cave so it should be dark. Yes, darkness can often be used to great effect in a horror film. But instead of adding tension and excitement to the film, it only caused me to be confused as to what was going on.

It’s not all bad. There are a couple of interesting murders (one involving partial decapitation by a shovel that’s pretty cool) and there are one or two scenes that made me jump and squirm.

I was happy to see the Dutch venturing into slasher territory. I’d even be excited to see another one, even if this one failed to ignite my fan-boy sensibilities. Gore-hounds and horror fanatics will find some interesting violence in this film, anybody else should stick with the Descent for their scary movie-in-a-cave fix.

Cinema Macabre Issue – Friday The 13th, Part 3

friday the 13th part 3

Some of the movie reviewers over on Blogcritics have created a little monthly horror filmic feature. It’s basically us talking about our favorite scary movies. This month’s feature includes devil worship, psycho killers, and lesbian vampires! What more could you want?

I’ll only include my bit here, but please head over to Blogcritics (sorry the Blogcritics link no longer works) and read the rest, it will be worth it, I promise.

What is it about the 3-D effect that keeps it resurfacing every decade or so? Why do we want our films to come screaming right into our seats? I’ve only seen one full-on 3-D flick in an actual theatre, and that was Jaws 3, not this third installment in the Jason franchise.

While we’re at it, why do film producers think they’re being even more clever by making the third film in a series in 3-D? That ran out of style somewhere around Plan 9 From Outer Space, Part 3: The Revenge of Patrolman Kelton. I never saw Friday the 13th, Part III in the theatres or in 3-D. In fact, I never saw any of that series in the theatre, only on the long departed, and dearly missed late-night television series, USA Up All Night (whatever happened to Rhonda Shear anyway?).

To a prepubescent boy, even in a highly edited version, Jason kicked lots of sexy teen arse. This one includes lots of good 3-D scares like Jason shooting a spear gun right at the screen, but the creative kills and bountiful bosoms kept me coming back. As a kid, I always looked forward to Friday the 13th on the calendar because I knew Rhonda would be showing a marathon of the films. I stayed up way too late on many a lonely Friday night watching that masked murdered wreak havoc.

They are all short on plot, convention, acting chops, and anything else a critic might try to find, but it had everything a geeky little kid from Oklahoma wanted in his late-night viewing.

Shutter (2004)

shutter movie poster

A young couple races down a dark, deserted stretch of road. Out of nowhere, someone appears on the road and the young couple tears into her. Shook up, the couple heatedly discuss what to do, with a corpse on the road, and quickly decide to leave it lying there.

Sound familiar? The Shutter starts with an I Know What You Did Last Summer twist, and continues through its 95 minutes stealing from, er paying homage to, all sorts of horror films. There’s a creepy, long, black-haired Asian girl slinking out of regular household objects a la Ringu, and strange effects keep happening to photographs as in Ju-On (The Grudge). In some ways, it is very much a pastiche of other horror films.

Don’t let that discourage you from seeing this film, for though it doesn’t come out all that original, it still manages to be effectively horrifying. The tension builds quite nicely, and there were more than a few moments where I was squirming in my seat.

Post running over the poor girl, the couple – Tun (Ananda Everingham) and Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee) – begin experiencing some strange, even supernatural, events. A young girl begins haunting their dreams and even appearing in the shadows, the bathroom sink, and their photographs. Tun is a photographer by trade, and he begins finding strange white streaks in his most recent photographs, followed by shadowy glimpses of a girl. Could it be the girl they ran over?

They follow the photographs to people who collect pictures of the dead, of ghosts, and discover a few old mysteries along the way. As they attempt to find out why they are being haunted, and losing a few friends via suicide, they discover more about this mystery girl and each other.

As an audience, we are treated to a handful of really effective films that amp up the tension and give us more than a little fright.

There are a few scenes in which the camera rolls over a series of “real” photographs borrowed from actual true believers outside the confines of the film. I had seen some of these pictures on ghost websites, and though I am completely skeptical, those scenes creeped the crap out of me.

The score is amazingly well done, being filled with clatters and screams and freaky noises even in the non “scary” scenes adding a surreal mood for the entire film.

On a purely critical level, there are several things to dislike. Many of its effects are taken directly from other films, and there are a few giant holes in the plot upon which to frown. But ultimately, it is very effective at what it attempts to do. That is to create a creepy hour and a half in which to scare the bejeesus out of its audience.

Pulse (2006)

pulse

Why?

Dear god, why did I waste 90 minutes of my precious life on this film? Why did the filmmakers waste so much of their time making it?

The story of how I came to watch Pulse yesterday afternoon is an interesting one. When it came out on DVD a few weeks ago I thought it sounded interesting. Or rather, when I learned that it was a remake of a Japanese horror film, I became interested in that.

I immediately went to Blockbuster.com and added the film to my queue. Well, I added the Japanese version, the American remake, plus another film named Pulse because I couldn’t quite figure out which version was the remake. Blockbuster’s website is amazingly slow, at least on my computer, and at the time it wasn’t worth the effort to try to figure out which was the proper one.

I put on the Japanese one first, figuring that if it was any good I’d determine which version was the remake and watch it. Of course, this being Blockbuster, their screwy queue system never works properly and I generally get my picks out of order. So, even though the Japanese import was number one in the queue, an American film titled Pulse, which was several movies down in the queue came first (and I should note the films above it are all listed as “available.”)

Putting the film in I assumed it was the American remake, but later found out later that it was in fact a British film titled Octane. Why the Americans have renamed it Pulse is beyond me. Is Pulse a better title than Octane? Do Americans not understand what “octane” means? The fact that it was changed means there was some board meeting discussing this very thing. Insanity reigns.

Anyway, the film was mostly lousy but contained a few interesting moments and was highlighted by a pretty good performance by Madeline Stowe. Then I soon discovered other movies that looked interesting, put them all way before the correct versions of Pulse in my queue, and promptly forgot about my desire to see the films.

Two days ago a friend and I went to see a movie (Night at the Museum – much funnier than I expected it to be for those of you keeping count) and afterward, he invited me over for some pizza. I had a Blockbuster return in my car so I decided to swing by there first. The only great thing about Blockbuster’s online rental program is that you can now return their mail-in movies to the local store where they will not only tell the computer to send another movie out but will let you exchange it for an in-store movie.

Being that my friend was expecting me, I quickly skimmed the new release aisle for something I hadn’t seen. Hmmm, what’s this? A new horror flick called Pulse? Sure, that sounds good. Now as insulting as it sounds, I really didn’t remember all the stuff that had happened previously in the above paragraphs and had no idea what Pulse was.

Took it home watched it and then remembered that this was the remake.

My kingdom for a better memory.

Oh! That I should have remembered and got something else. What a stinking goat turd.

Pulse has an interesting concept – the dead have found a way back into our world by slipping in through a previously unused and unknown frequency unleashed by some crazy virus-happy hackers. But the execution of this idea is astoundingly bad.

The dead find a way back to the real world, and what do they do? Drain the life out of the living, that’s what. That might make sense if this somehow made the dead more alive, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. They just like making us living people want to kill ourselves. It’s fun, I guess.

The movie doesn’t concentrate on things like plot, or meaning, but rather spends its time trying to give the audience cheap scares. Honestly, I don’t mind a cheap scare movie, I can dig being jolted time and time again, but here they transcribe the scares minutes before they happen. Every. Single. Time. Oh, there’s a scary musical queue. Oh, the lights are flicking. Oh, suddenly our character is alone and in a strange place. Do you think something is going to jump out at them?

“Terrible” is the word.

Did somebody say plot holes? Did I hear the word continuity? You can almost hear the film saying in a Spanish accent, “we don’t need no stinking’ continuity.” You see the dead, they come through the internet onto your computer screen and then into your soul. Except when the plot needs them to come through other portable media like cell phones and PDA devices.

Then that’s okay too. Because those things have wireless connections right? Then well, okay, sometimes they can come through the computer even when it’s unplugged. But maybe they made their way into the computer before the power outage. That makes some kind of sense, until a character is in the basement doing her wash, then we need the bad guys to come out of the dryer. I guess it was a souped-up internet-ready dryer.

That kind of junk happens throughout. They make some arbitrary rules and then break them because they need another scare. But again, it isn’t scary because you know it’s coming from about three blocks away.

The only redeeming quality about the film was the inclusion of Samm Levine (who played Neil on the excellent, but quickly canceled series Freaks and Geeks) and even he has a small, nondescript part.

I spit on this movie. I fart in its general direction. I damn the 90 minutes I wasted watching it.

Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (1943)

frankenstein meets the wolfman poster

I’d like to say that I grew up going to the Midnight Movies and staying up to watch the old Universal horror movies on television. I’d like to say that, but I can’t because, well, because it simply isn’t true. I grew up watching movies from my generation, the 80’s, and that means the Goonies, Gremlins, Ghoulies, and others that don’t start with the letter “G.’ It has only been recently that I have dipped into the classics of horror and began watching them.

There has been a recent spat of high-quality DVD releases of the mainstays of the franchise – Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman – and I’ve filled my till with the magic, the brilliance that is those films. So, it was with pleasure that I recently found a VHS copy of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman.

To say this is a great movie would be missing the point and make me think you were delusional. It’s far from anything anyone ought to call great, but it’s still a pretty fun bit of horror history.

The title is a little misleading – well not technically so since Frankenstein does in fact meet the Wolfman – but a picture like this makes one think they will either be locked in mortal combat for the entirety of the picture or team up to destroy some other force, like Dracula for instance.

More to the point it is something of a character study for the Wolfman as he is awakened from his grave and has to come to terms with his moonlight alter-ego. It is late in the film when he manages to come across Frankenstein’s castle and a frozen monster inside. The monster is awakened and wreaks havoc before coming to a not all too engrossing close.

The film has a good atmosphere and the sets are marvelous, but it never gets fully off the ground. There just doesn’t seem to be enough plot to keep the story moving, as it often plunges into a dulldrom.

Definitely worth checking out for classic horror fans, but not the first place to stop.

Rabid (1977)

rabid movie poster

Going to the video store with my wife is an interesting endeavor, as we have rather divergent tastes in movies. I have recently developed a devout love for all things Japanese and Italian horror, while my wife prefers obscure French cinema. This usually means that we spend way too much time wandering around the store looking for something we both can agree on until one of us gives up, and the other gets what they want.

I recently won out and settled on the 1977 Canadian horror picture, Rabid, starring adult film icon Marilyn Chambers and directed by David Cronenberg.

The second part of our video renting dilemma is actually watching the films we choose. My wife always complains that I never let her watch the videos she gets from the library (which is true for she gets rather dull-looking French films and horrible BBC series adapted from weepy women’s literature.) And I complain that she never lets me watch my gory, bloody zombie flicks (which is also true, because she doesn’t let me watch them.)

When we actually manage to find something we can agree on (usually classic American films) we make a cozy evening of it, otherwise we have to wait until the other one is either at work or back at the computer engulfed in something else.

Luck struck me twice and I was able to watch the aforementioned Cronenberg flick while the wife worked on her dissertation.

It is one of Cronenberg’s first pictures made strictly for the cinema and a rather low-budget affair but not without its merit.

The film begins with Rose (Marilyn Chambers) and Hart (Frank Moore) taking off on a motorcycle trip only to have a serious collision with a stalled van out on the highway. The two are taken to a plastic surgery clinic due to them being miles away from the nearest hospital in Montreal. Hart is merely banged up, but Rose is in serious condition.

Dr. Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) decides to perform an experimental skin graph on Rose and the surgery seems to go well, but Rose is left in a coma for many weeks. When she finally comes out of it, she feels very strange, and very cold and has what has to be the oddest placed film mutations ever – a small, Alien-esque spike that sprouts out of a very vagina-looking hole in her arm pit.

Rose then begins going around hugging her victims in order that the underarm-spike thing can stab them and suck their blood. These victims then mutate themselves into rabid zombies biting and infecting others until they slip into a coma and die.

It’s all fairly silly, but Cronenberg proves himself very capable of turning it into a pretty thrilling, if not particularly cinematic, piece of film. It is definitely a Cronenberg film too as it all moves fairly slowly, is filled with some very deliberate camera work, and makes a few social observations about plastic surgery amongst all the blood and death making.

Marilyn Chambers proves a very capable actress coming into her first non-porn role. Though after this she slipped right back into porn. Even here, though she has to do some actual acting, there is an abundance of boob shots. I swore I would never complain about naked boobies, and I shan’t here even though they are as bountiful as they are gratuitous and cause continuity problems galore.

The rabid zombies plague Montreal until martial law is declared and poor Hart realizes that Rose is the cause of it all leading to a not-so-happy ending.

This isn’t Shakespeare, nor even a big-budgeted Michael Bay picture, but Cronenberg manages to create something interesting and well made despite his obvious budget limitations. It is obviously influenced by Night of the Living Dead and an influence on films such as 28 Days Later. Certainly, a picture to see by Cronenberg fans and horror-philes alike.

The Amityville Horror (1979)

amityville horror

Haunted House stories have to be some of the oldest examples of scary tales of horror. What’s scarier than the fear that resides right in your own home? Where can you find safety if not your own house? Where do we find much of our own horror but our own homes late at night with the creepy shadows and wind-blown creaky noises?

The Amityville Horror (1979) does a nice job of ratcheting up the spooks for about the first half but falters off towards the end.

Based on the book of the same name, which is supposedly based on true events, the story focuses on the Lutz family who just moved into a lovely old home that takes on some devious supernatural qualities. You see as the story begins we see that the family living in the home before the Lutz family were all brutally murdered in their sleep by one of their own. Even knowing this, the Lutz family buy the house for a bargain and move in because “houses don’t have memories.”

Houses it seems, not only have memories but have rotten dispositions too.

Strange things start to happen pretty immediately when the Lutz’s move in. The boathouse lights turn on and doors open in the middle of the night, the toilets get clogged with blood-looking ooze, and the priest who comes to bless the house (Rod Steiger) gets trapped in a room with a million flies and is told by a creepy voice to get out.

The film moves slowly towards its frights. This isn’t a film with a real live knife-wielding boogeyman ready to jump out and scare the family (and audience) at a moment’s notice. No, this film builds its horror with slow tension. Creepy things happen amongst the more mundane events of the family’s life. Between the scares we see the family unpacking boxes, attending weddings, taking boat rides, and chopping wood. Lots and lots of wood chopping.

Although amongst all of this in-between action, we hardly get to know the family at all. It is late in the film that it is revealed what George Lutz (a very hairy James Brolin) does. There is lots of talk about him needing to go back to work and all of these odd shots of the business van that only reveal that George owns his own business but strangely cut off the occupation. Eventually, it is revealed that he is a surveyor. And that’s how the whole movie is. We see a lot of the family doing things, but get no connection as to who they are as people.

Ultimately the slow build of tension fizzles out before it can really burst. This is the problem with making a haunted house picture. If there isn’t a ghost or phantom coming out of the walls, there is only so much horror a house itself can bring. Droves of flies, windows opening on their own, and chairs moving by themselves can build some tension, but without something bigger causing it all that’s left is a disappointment. In the end, all the filmmakers can muster is lots of heavy thunder and rain followed by a stairwell collapsing into a basement of blood. It’s just a house after all and that can be run away from.

Apparently, they followed the book pretty closely, and I’m not one to often ask for the creature behind the horror, but here it seems like they should have given us a little more. I can’t imagine the devil appearing for a final attack would have made the picture a great one, but it could have at least given a more adventurous ending.

The Untold Story (1993)

the untold story poster

Originally written and posted in October 2006.

Someday I really will get into the reasons I tend to watch really depraved, sick, twisted, and awfully gory flickery. For now, I’ll continue to review the nasties I watch. I’m not really all that sure how I even know about some of these films anymore. I think I heard about this one by hearing about some other film and then following various links of similar films to this one. Or maybe I looked up one film on IMDB.com and followed a thread about similar films. Either way I did hear of it, and heard it was one of the most violent, sickest films out there so of course, this demented gore-head had to watch.

I hesitate to call myself a demented gore-head because my mom might read this and then where would I be? In truth, I watch lots of other films, regular like without violence and gore, but there is something raw and carnal about twisted films that make me watch. There I go again trying to explain they why when I said that would have to wait until later.

Ultimately this film wasn’t quite as sick as everyone said. Sure there is plenty of gore and buckets of blood in this tale of a crazed serial killer who slaughters people with his butcher knife and sometimes serves them up as pork pies, but none of it is particularly realistic and therefore not as sick as it could be. The blood, the guts, the nastiness always looks fake, so you never get sucked into the gore too much. The reputation comes, me thinks, from a particularly brutal scene involving the slaughter of several small children. Movies tend to shy away from mass murder involving little ones and so this film seems particularly nasty, even though what is seen on camera isn’t that vicious.

Gore aside, what really lowers the level of this film is the portrayal of cops. All of the police trying to solve the crime are completely incompetent, inept, and stupid. In one of the opening scenes where we see some severed limbs wash ashore, the cops bicker, joke, and argue over who will investigate the appendages. In numerous scenes, the one detective with half a brain brings in a scantily clad hooker as his date while the other male cops oogle and ogle all over her. In the interrogation scenes, all of the cops are all too eager to brutally beat a confession out of the killer.

Anthony Wong does an excellent job playing the psychopath and he even manages to render a few moments of sympathy from the audience.

This is totally a low-grade movie made for gore heads looking for a little fake blood. Even there it never rises above its cult standing as the epitome of crazy exploitation.

You have been warned.

Whispering Corridors (1998)

whispering corridors

Poor Hur Eun-young (Mi-yeon Lee) has been having difficulties ever since she started teaching at her old school. The students don’t respect her as an authority figure, the teachers still look at her as a student, and unlike all of her fellow peers, she actually has some sympathy for what it is like to feel the pressures of being a young girl in South Korea. Oh, and people keep dropping like bloody flies around her.

The film begins with Mrs. Park, a teacher at the all-girl school, finding something disturbing in a yearbook. She then runs frantically through the hallways, scared out of her wits, before she calls Eun-young and mysteriously tells her that Jin-ju is still around, still attending the school. She then drops the phone and is strangled to death by an unseen person wearing the school uniform.

This mysterious killer takes Mrs. Park’s body and moves it outside to make it look like a suicide hanging. Early the next morning two completely different students, the pretty, outgoing art student Ji-oh (Gyu-ri Kim) and the less pretty, shy Jae-yi (Kang-hie Choi) arrive at school early for they have been chosen this week as class clerks, which means they have to arrive early and clean the room. Upon entering the classroom they discover Kim Jung-sook (Ji-hye Yun) is already there. The three form something of a friendship that will grow and change as the film progresses. Ji-oh, upon walking outside discovers Mrs. Park’s body hanging outside.

All of the girls are rounded up and made to promise they will not talk about the incident, and specifically not spread any rumors about it.

Of course, the girls do talk about it and begin to speculate that it was not suicide but murder. Mrs. Park was a notoriously mean and hateful teacher who seemed to take great pleasure in punishing her students. Perhaps a particularly hated student went off the edge and murdered Park in retribution. Those rumors turn to speculation that it could have been Jung-sook as she was a particular favorite for punishment by Park, was not a particularly good student, has few friends, and was at the school earlier than anyone else.

Eun-young befriends our three protagonists and begins sniffing out foul play herself, as she is continually reminded of the death of her high school friend, Jin-ju a few years earlier on those very school grounds.

The mystery deepens, the bodies pile up and the plot gets confusing.

I’ll be honest here, I had a very hard time following just exactly what the heck was happening. This is not particularly uncommon for me, especially in mysteries where knowing who did what to whom is almost always vitally important. I don’t mind it so much because I’m almost always clueless as to who-dunnit until the movie tells me during the final scene.

The thing is I’m really lousy at remembering character names, and unless the actor is someone well known to me faces and actions get mixed up in my head. A film like Whispering Corridors only compounds this confusion. The unfamiliar Korean names render them impossible for me to remember. And the unknown actors have a hard time standing out in my head (and when it is an all-girl cast all with the same long, black hair clothed in the same school-girl outfits you can forget it.)

The confusion is compounded by the plot of the film which is full of flashbacks, useless clues, and of red herrings. Like many mysteries, the film is designed to confuse the viewer a little so that it can surprise us in the last scene.

Visually the film takes quite a few cues from US slasher films circa the 1980s. There are lots of stop-motion cuts, weird fade-outs, and shots of the killer from angles that obscure his/her face. It has also taken a few pages out of the Dario Argento film book, especially with its use of sound for disturbing effects.

In reality, it isn’t particularly scary. The deaths mostly look cheesy and belong to a different era. Though director Ki-Hyung Park tries his best to create a creepy mood, he can only manage a few good moments of eeriness with broad shots of the super long hallways linking all of the classrooms together. It works best, not as a horror film, but as social commentary. I don’t know a thing about Korean school systems, but if they are anything like those depicted in this film, then they need some serious reorganization.

All of the teachers take sadistic pleasure in abusing and harassing the students. Several times we see teachers not only verbally abusing their students but even hitting them, hard, in the face and kicking at them. One teacher in particular, nicknamed Mad Dog, unleashes upon his students in nearly every scene. When he is not pitting them against each other academically (going as far as to say they are enemies in the war for the best grades) he is physically abusing them and coming onto them sexually.

What is particularly revolting about these scenes is that none of the students seem surprised by the actions, and the administration turns a blind eye. Even Eun-young who is a good-hearted woman and wants to make social change in the system, jokes at the Mad Dogs advances saying his nickname instead should be “pervert.”

Behind the death toll and mystery lies a cry for help from the students. It is an interesting juxtaposition between this and American movies that deal with the high school experience. Where American films generally deal with the effects of social standing and the fight to become “popular” Whispering Corridors shows how in a world where only good grades count the actions are also less than exemplary.

Whispering Corridors generally fails as an excellent horror/mystery film, but it does manage to raise important questions about the educational system, friendship, and how we treat our fellow beings.

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.