Red Shoes

Or the Red Shoe Virus, that infects almost everyone who sees them with the desire to possess them, like Gollum's precious…

Of course they also bear a fatal curse – much like a certain videotape, perhaps – with their own rules. Can Sun-jae work out what these are and save her young daughter Tae-su, or will the shoes work their dark magic on both of them?

While The Red Shoes certainly delivers plenty of shocks, it doesn't really advance the art of horror in any way, rather coming across as something of a compendium of motifs from previous J- and K-horror entries, and crossed, not quite convincingly, with the ballet horror of its titular inspiration from The Archers and – perhaps – the everything-louder-than-everything-else aesthetics and illogics of Dario Argento's classic Suspiria.

There's a vague sense that the filmmakers wanted to impart a touch more gravitas to the proceedings in linking the backstory of the shoes' curse to the period of Japanese occupation – return of the repressed and all that – but the idea remains underdeveloped and largely arbitrary, providing little more than a modicum of period recreation and an admittedly enjoyable but too-modern seeming interpretive dance sequence paying tribute to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, or something…

You also got the sense that they didn't really know when to end the film, as we get one conclusion/resolution followed by another that – depending on interpretation – either negates the preceding 85 minutes or adds nothing to it besides further – and less and less effective – shocks.

Worse, we then get one of those let's leave it open for a sequel type post-credits no-surprises that pretty much make you feel the filmmakers really didn't care by this point.

It's this, ultimately, that signals the difference between this film and its namesake: whereas Powell and Pressburger were genuinely committed to the art of cinema, this Korean piece is first and foremost a work of commerce trying to masquerade as something it isn't. But, like the attempt to pass off shoes that are in fact fuschia pink as red, it never really convinces – even if they and the film as a whole, do look very nice regardless…