Cinderella

I wouldn't go expecting anything to do with the original fairytale. I was expecting a Korean horror twist on it like that fantastic, "Hansel & Gretel". I was expecting a vicious stepmother keeping her daughter captive and so on. Actually Cinderella has very loose references to the infamous tale. In fact, I would've scrapped the title altogether and called it something referring to vanity, because that's the theme that is most emphasised in the film.

Cinderella is 2/3's of a good film. I found the first 40 minutes or so incredibly difficult to follow thanks to most of the characters looking the same and having very little development. The first 40 minutes don't work with what occurs for the remainder of the film when it finally finds it footing. It's quite tedious and confusing to see these friends getting killed off by a ghost after having plastic surgery for no apparent reason. The whole ghost-killer idea doesn't even really work that effectively until it's loosely developed in the finale. Even characters with no earlier development get killed off and were left wondering why and if we really care!

However, the overall feel of the film changed at the first flashback where a pretty huge twist is revealed. It's highly engaging and then allows us to focus on the characters who really care about, the mother and her daughter. In its final moments the film almost becomes dream-like with the past merging with the present, but it remains utterly absorbing, even though it's incredibly difficult to work out what the hell is going on! The ending left me feeling completely bemused and I'd completely lost the plot. However, I did find it incredibly emotional and heart felt, allowing us to feel a great deal of sympathy for the characters, especially the mother.

Aside for a few creepy moments, I wouldn't call Cinderella a full-blown horror film. It's more of a dream-like dark drama, thanks to the ghost idea being under-used and under-developed. The frustrating thing about the film is that it's full of fantastic twists and ideas, but explores them in ways which are needlessly confusing! The plot is also messy and is in need of character development, or character reduction.

However, Cinderella is worth a watch. It's an engaging and emotional experience and has a heart, which is greatly lacking in modern American horror films. It also has a wonderful score and surprising twists to ensure that you're never bored. It's just a shame that the writing department was as ill conceived as it was. But, perhaps you're a highly intelligent person and can differentiate fantasy from reality and past from present. I for one can not!

To start, I want to mention something: I have a list of "Top Ten Scariest Asian Movies". This may have been the weakest in my original list (though the 'weakest' still made the list for almost a year as a Top Ten scary-as-Hell Asian horror flick). Since I created the list, I saw the blood-curdling, cleverly-scripted 'Coming Soon' and decided it had earned a place over 'Cinderella'. I removed it, but that doesn't mean I don't want to give this creepy Korean thriller its props here.

First of all, if you love K-Horror, this deserves a look. Yes, it has one or two elements that appear in other Asian horror. I should point out that except in some extreme cases, I actually like the formula and the common images (black hair covering a face, usually with one ghostly dead eye peeking out, and the horrifying, creepy reveals of what is almost always referred to in the movie's promo materials/synopsis as 'the Dark Secret behind it all'. Usually in the last act, the 'horrifying buried past' is usually so brutal and disturbing you have sympathy for the 'Onyro' (lf you're familiar with Asian horror enough to have done a little research, you know the meaning--if not, this is a great time you to look it up) along with the fear. When handled right, the true back-story is so horrible that you kinda decide the ghost/Onryo out for revenge has every reason to come back and try to cause serious damage.

I gave Cinderella seven stars rather than the 9-10 I give to perfect, close-to-soiling- yourself in utter terror Asian horror such as Shutter and Ju-on. I took three stars off based mainly on my opinion that some parts, especially the first act, are slower than I thought they needed to be, dragging down the film and viewer a bit. The movie could have stand to lose 10-15 minutes for a tighter edit. HOWEVER… get ready for the last act of Cinderella--it pounces right at you out of the dark.

This is one of those last acts, and with a back story that stuck with me. There's a couple hints, but it turns out to be way uglier (no pun intended-if you've seen the movie you'll get the pun) than anyone imagined. I also actually started talking back to the flat screen TV a couple times (if I'd seen it in a theater and said the same things at that volume, I would have been asked by an usher to calm down) and at least once hearing myself urgently and loudly giving a character advice ("oh no, no, NO, don't, DO NOT go in there, Oh God, RUN!"). I do that frequently during really addictive, well-made, fun TV shows (True Blood, Breaking Bad, and Spartacus for example), but it's rare when I watch a movie. Yet another movie on this list where a movie-watching exception was made. Funny thing, it's usually Korean chillers like "Cinderella" or Korean crime-revenge "I Saw the Devil" and "Memories of Murder" that get me so hooked in that (more than once) almost blew off a deadline because I HAD to know what happened.

I saw that many reviewers cited the movie for being 'too melodramatic' and 'more like some soap opera'. I can see a base argument for 'melodramatic' ; fair enough,I suppose (though I personally don't agree). However, a SOAP? Jesus, really? If so, I'd like to ask what the hell kind of fu(ked-up soaps have YOU been watching? The only thing on TV right now that is a 'horror-drama' and would even come close to this claim is American Horror Story. Note: if you're a big fan of the show AHS --like I am--you'll probably enjoy this movie.

Yeah, Cinderella is no Shutter or Two Sisters (then again, nothing put on film is) but if you're looking for some Oynro-genre scares and a twist or two you didn't see coming, watch it now. There's much worse ways (and MUCH worse Asian horror movies to watch, trust me) to spend 100 minutes. As long as you weren't really planning on sleeping that night anyway….

This 2006 South Korean horror movie is more than just your average Asian ghost movie. It also offers a nice jab at the shallow and self-indulgent phenomena of beauty ideals and plastic surgery. I enjoyed this jab at the hollow plastic surgery culture that we live in today, because it is so pathetic that people undergo plastic surgery in a vague attempt to live up to the beauty ideals set by an equally hollow fashion industry fueled by the almighty dollar.

"Cinderella" (aka "Sin-de-rel-la") is not a scary movie, not by a long shot, and definitely not by South Korean standards - if you compare it to other South Korean horror movies. But what it lacks in scares it sort of make up for in the story, and definitely do so in the acting.

If you enjoy the traditional Asian style ghost and horror genre, then "Cinderella" might be a bit out of your liking. It is not a traditional genre movie. But if you like to see something that breaks out of the pattern and brings something new to the genre, by all means spend about an hour and a half on watching "Cinderella".

Director Man-Dae Bong managed to put together an interesting movie. And although it is slow paced, it does build up the story quite nicely. "Cinderella" is a horror movie driven by a proper storyline and not by scares, ghosts and special effects.

I found "Cinderella" to be a good alternative in the South Korean horror cinema, where many other movies tend to follow a step by step instruction manual of how to piece together a horror movie.

When her friends start mysteriously dying, a young woman finds a disturbing secret for their strange behavior when she learns the incidents occur following an operation each one received from her mother and races to stop her friends from killing themselves before more of her friends are injured.

There was some good stuff to this one from time-to-time. One of the best features is that when it starts to get going there are some great plays on the nature of beauty. With each of the girls shown to be vain about their appearance to fit into accepted society going through the unnecessary surgery, this one enhances the idea that those who decide to get surgery are the ones who get attacked in several good scenes. One of the best here is the rather fun and entertaining birthday party scenes, which have some creepy images once it utilizes them, from the lit birthday-cake moving through the darkened room to the rather bizarre freak-outs when the power goes out which is a pretty entertaining scene. Coupled with the different visions in the mirrors featuring the distorted face, either with severe scalpel marks or burn wounds is an overall great scene. Another really fun scene is the fantastic scene in art class, which starts with the hand appearing in the paint before dragging the victim head-first into it, only when returning to it later on showing no signs of anything having happened. With that comes the enjoyable film-long plus here in the kills, which are pretty graphic and brutal. Several faces are sliced up with knives, a burnt victim, a stabbing in the arm and more, which while it doesn't sound like a lot definitely has its moments. Moreover, once it becomes quite clear what's happening, this one picks up considerably. The backstory to this is quite important to that as it helps to identify the causes of what's going on with there being two great parts that come from it. Firstly is the awesome twist that's revealed, which isn't seen coming and is definitely something that comes as a shock but also highlights her obsession with plastic surgery towards her daughters' friends as well being a rather inventive way of finding out about it. The need for hiding the secret from others with the work she does is a fine way of showing the obsession needed to carry it off while also showing off the grisly underside of the desire for physical perfection. As this ties nicely into the fun attack scenes where the victims are tortured based on the surgery performed, placing the theme of their misguided quest for beauty squarely at the forefront for a rather interesting storyline. These here are what works for the film. There were a couple of problems with this one that holds it down somewhat. One of the film's biggest flaws is that this makes utterly no sense at all. From the revelation angle that's done at the very end that's just so confusingly done that nothing here is given anything close to a definitive answer to the film's incessant problem of skipping around in time so much that there's hardly any way of knowing where anyone is at in a certain point in time, this one becomes all the more frustrating without giving clear answers as it goes on. The film gradually gets irritating since it goes from the present time to the flashback that explains everything to see what happened with the friends without any change to explain that it's skipping around in time. It all looks the same, from the wardrobe to the outfits and appearance as well, and this just ends up not really doing the film any favors in clarifying issues at all. The fact that the film just sort of ends without really doing anything else is a big part of that. This one doesn't have a real clear-cut way of ending, just featuring scenes that make it impossible to tell what's going on, and it's a very problematic issue. The last flaw is that there's not a whole lot in the middle that are really enjoyable, which manages to come across so dull they rarely match up with any kind of excitement or momentum. All in all, these all take this one down.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

I have heard many bad reviews about this film. I wonder why. I thought this movie was made very well. Everything was explained clearly, the storyline was very original and just great. Even the idea used in this movie was fantastic. Not all horror movies need to be scary, they just need to be entertaining. This movie, in terms of the storyline, might have even been more effective than A tale of two sisters, because the storyline is extremely clear. You know what is going on throughout the whole film. Even the ending was quite unexpected. Even this film might get extremely dramatic towards the end of the movie, there are tons of emotion of the characters very well used in this movie. This movie has a tremendously strong character development, which I personally find it being much more effective than shows such as Noriko's dinner table. I cannot understand why this film is so lowly rated. I hardly find any flaws in this film. The first half of this film was tremendously scary, especially the scene where the girl looks into the mirror and saw blood covered over her face. That scene was much more effective than even shows such as wishing stairs. The scenes during the first half of the movie are tremendously scary, though the second half was very dramatic. Hence, the building up of tension and fear was done very badly in this movie. It does not matter. This film succeeds in both being very terrifying and very touching to me. This film is very original as well. Highly recommended. Score:9/10