Fantasia 2006: Red Shoes

[bryant]

Yah, so, J-horror, long black hair as a signifier of angry spirits, everyday object as a carrier of the horror…

Red shoes, actually. Except these were more fuchsia. And yes, the idea is to evoke Hans Christian Andersen, but it didn’t work out very well. Lots of ballet, but no horrific mandate to dance forever, more’s the pity.

The twist, as seems to be obligatory in Korean J-horror influenced movies, has to do with family dynamics. Sadly, the director didn’t manage to overlap the ghost story and the family horror story at all, which meant that the last twenty minutes of the movie felt like an overdone coda: “Ah, you’ve resolved the ghosts? Now we will show you the real ending, because the dramatic tension we just built up and resolved was only the beginning!”

So I coulda done without that. I mean, it wasn’t abysmal, but it sure wasn’t good.

Grade: C+.

[Crossposted from Population: One; go here for the original post.]