Sin-de-rel-la

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!

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

Mommy's little girl Hyeon Su is a normal 17-year old student,beautiful enough to disregard her friends latest obsession:plastic surgery.Or maybe the lack of interest is due to the fact her gentle mother Yong Hee is a plastic surgeon.When one of her friends decides to go under the knife for a little skin revision,Yong Hee gives her more than a pretty new face.The result is blood all over the place.Seeing so many of her friends die,Hyeon Su finds comfort in her friend Seung Eun,but then she discovers a creepy secret of her mother...Some reviewers compared this film to masterful "A Tale of Two Sisters",but it's clearly not as good and memorable.In fact it's pretty dull and offers almost zero scares."Cinderella" looks slick,the acting is fine and Korean girls are jaw-droppingly beautiful,unfortunately the action moves at the snail's pace.Skip this one.5 out of 10.

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.