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!

After watching 'Cinderella', I feel very deceiving, where this is more melodramatic rather than a shock horror. Yes, there's some appearances of a-long-haired-ghost, but the whole issue monopolizes the screen is the drama about a mother-daughter's relationship that is very resemblance of Hideo Nakata's Dark Water.

Hyoon-su (Sin Se-kyeong) is raised by her single mother, a renowned plastic surgeon. She's living a very happy life, since her mother is caring her lovingly. But her life get a darker tone since one of her friend who's done a plastic surgery are found dead. Things get worse since she find a secret basement and her dark past is revealed. since then, her close relationship with her mother will never be the same.

The direction from Bong Man-dae has some subtle moments and it has some generic horror atmosphere. The act is never perfectly fits, since this is a horror movie. Peoples are privilege to act surreal. The movie it self somewhat never fail to delivers the drama since horror it self is minor content of the movie.

'Cinderella' has a unique issue, dealing with women and their obsession of beauty. The depiction of human selfishness is quite profound. Alas it never has a clear resolution through the ending, while it clear that the horror gimmick is use only for scare tactic. The real transcendence of 'Cinderella' is the turmoil between mother-daughter. I think 'Cinderella are try it best to portray how a human to gain happiness could victimized other people. It rather moving as drama, but not satisfying enough to-be a good 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.

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.