Sin-de-rel-la

First off,Cinderella isn't about a pair of glass slippers, a Kindly Prince, or a Fairy God-Mother. What Cinderella is about, is Women's obsessions with their appearance and the terrifying lengths some women will go to keep their appearance beautiful.

Cinderella tells the story of Hyunsu, a typical 17-year old girl, whose mother just happens to be a plastic surgeon. Hyunsu's friends frequently go to her mother for plastic surgeries, but then after wards the friends become obsessed with their faces, and eventually end up dead.

I'm torn on this movie. While I do think it was a well-done piece of social commentary about women and their conceptions of beauty, the horror element wasn't really scary, the plot is jumbled, the editing needs some serious work, and the ending is all over the place.

That being said, there are things I did like about this movie. The Score was great! It features a lot of great classical music, specifically, one of my favorite composers, Antonio Vivaldi. The cinematography was well-done, and I thought the characters were well-drawn out and the acting was good. Another thing that I liked, is that the film does a good job of pacing (I don't think I looked at my watch once!).

The film itself, while failing to be a true horror movie, turns into more of a melodramatic film with supernatural overtones (kind of like Memento Mori). However, this may be the fault of overly ambitious packaging than what the director intended the film to be. The only thing that's really scary about this film is the motivations of the characters in their pursuit of beauty. And if you watch this film with that in mind, you probably won't feel as let down as I was.

Also, if one of the reasons why you watch watch Asian Horror is for the gore/shock factor, than you probably won't like Cinderella. The packaging suggests a lot of gory face-slashing scenes, and while the film does have a few of these scenes, they are rather tame compared with what is typical of the genre. Cinderella's focus is not shocking scenes of facial mutilation, but melodrama centering on a Mother-Daughter relationship, and women's self-destructive pursuit of beauty.

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!

No, this is nothing about that fairy tale with the pumpkin coach, fairy godmother and the glass slippers, but if I were to elaborate, I would have to spoil it for you, which I won't. But don't let curiosity get the better of you, as this movie is not fantastic. It's one of those movies that start off promisingly, before betraying its audience with cheap scare tactics and an incoherent storyline. And that's real horror.

Yoon-hee (To Ji-Won) and Hyun-soo (Shin Se-kyeong) are your ideal mother and daughter. One's a successful plastic surgeon, while the other your dutiful, obedient, and beautiful teenage daughter. Their relationship is like hand in glove, so close you'd think of them more as siblings rather than parent-child. But things start to go wrong (don't they always) when Hyun-soo's friends, whom Yoon-hee has operated on, start to go berserk.

Perhaps it's a warning to audiences, and for those Koreans ladies who don't bat an eyelid when going under the knife, if news reports are to be believed. The only truly scary moments are those scenes in plastic surgery, though somehow, I thought Kim Ki-duk's Time actually had more gore when featuring and describing what goes on during the surgery itself.

It's a tale of two halves, the fist being an attempt to shock audiences with standard scare tactics, which, I admit, did get to me now and then. However, the second half degenerated the movie into mindless mumbo-jumbo melodramatics, and was quite contrived into its forcing its ideas down your throat. Some things begin not to make sense, and while attempts are always presented to explain, you probably won't buy it, not that horror movies are logical to begin with.

The leads are all beautiful, and there is a distinct lack of male presence besides the negligible cop role. But hey, I'm not complaining, though the storyline could have been improved tremendously. I'd recommend you to watch this, only if you're a fan of mediocre Korean horror, on VCD. Watch out for those face off-ish moments!

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.

This movie gets to be underrated because it is a different kind of horror. Asian horror films have a unique way of making a film out of every fear the human mind could comprehend. This of course makes it the best, and worst, type of horror film. With this particular movie, one must step outside their usual routine and look at the situation presented to them. After you are out of your box you have to step into this film's twisted mind and distorted reality. This movie is really a mindf$#@ but it is certainly worth the ride. As for some of the underlying tones, they are also what makes Asian horror films so unique. This film is no exception, however it definitely is not the most underlying Asian film I have seen. Try Marebito. Excellent film. Sorry for speaking so vague and talking about Asian films in general, but I think it is necessary because this film deserves to be watched.