The Red Shoes (Bunhong Shin) poster & wallpaper
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Hye-su Kim, Seong-su Kim, Yeon-ah Park, Go Su-heui, Seo Ha-rim ... see more see more... , Ji-eun Kim , Son Se-gwang , Eol Lee , Sa Hyeon-jin , Hyon-Jin Sa , Su-hee Go

Kim Yong-gyun's picture The Red Shoes is a South Korean horror opus. The story unravels in Seoul, where Sun Jae (Kim Hye Soo) discovers her husband's infidelity and leaves him, moving into an ancient,... read more read more... semi-dilapidated apartment house with her daughter, Tae Soo. She discovers a strange pair of red shoes on the subway and carts them home with her, sans realizing that the shoes carry a demonic curse and threaten to destroy the life of whoever holds them. As supernatural terrors hit the apartment and otherworldly visions fill Sun Jae's mind (including a dream sequence where drops of blood snow down from the sky), the shoes unleash the buried malevolent thoughts and desires from everyone surrounding Sun Jae, propelling the individuals toward horrible deaths. Sun Jae and her boyfriend Cheol (Kim Seong-Su) then attempt to determine the origin of the shoes and end the death spell - before Sun Jae's life is extinguished. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

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50% liked it

2,660 ratings

Unrated, 1 hr. 39 min.

Directed by: Yong-gyun Kim

Release Date: September 1, 2005

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DVD Release Date: October 24, 2006

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Flixster Reviews (240)

  • animegirlaya
    August 5, 2011
    animegirlaya
    Creepy and Fact vs Fiction? Now i like Korean movies they can be wonderful and full of color....But this doesn't quite live up to what the beautiful 40s version did.

    Some good acting and direction and one of the most insane fantasy scene i have ever viewed. But the crap story... read more that can be confusing to so many viewers makes it hard to watch.

    So my grade is just skip it or watch if you love this cinema.
  • skactopus
    September 1, 2008
    skactopus
    At the time of this review, I have not seen a ton of horror films because this genre doesn't appeal to me as others do. With that said, Yong-gyun Kim creates one freaky film known as The Red Shoes.

    The movie starts out fairly quickly after a minute of bloody looking cre

    ... read moredits. The first brutal death comes and goes and the movie is off. As seen in many Asian flicks, not just horror, a bulk of the storytelling is fairly abstract and the ending supposedly ties everything together. The Red Shoes follows this same formula. It moves at a slow pace and it is a very dark story, which requires your attention to follow what is going on. Don't feel bad if you are lost because the ending does a pretty decent job at bringing a lot of things together, but not everything.

    The Asians really know how to create suspenseful horror films and once again, The Red Shoes is no exception. When this movie gets freaky, IT GETS FREAKY. Young eyes can get nightmares from watching something like this. The deaths are gory, albeit there isn't a whole lot of them. The deaths don't make this movie though. The suspense and scares do. Like any Asian horror, this film gets the scares in at the right moments, which in turn makes them successful.

    Just when you think it is all over and the red shoes story is complete, the movie continues for another 15 minutes. It is one h*** of a 15 minutes too. Unless you don't want to sleep, do not watch this alone in the dark right before you go to bed.

    The acting is good. Hye-su Kim is the ever popular female lead and she does what she has to. I give props to the young Yeon-ah Park for being in a movie like this.

    The Red Shoes is meant for Asian horror fanatics. This is truly a good watch for them.
  • ceWEBrity
    August 2, 2008
    ceWEBrity
    This is almost as bad as Cello; equally derivative, but slightly more involving and with much stronger imagery. I looked at the checklist of films that Cello cribs from and The Red Shoes also takes elements from every single one of those movies as well, except substitute music fo... read morer dancing. Allow me to repeat myself: Ringu (black-haired girl ghost), Tale of Two Sisters (entire aesthetic sensibility), Phone (past rivalry gone sour), The Eye (plot with heavy musical themes), Dark Water (devotion to the daughter), Acacia (disintegration of the family unit), or even Suicide Club (remaining weirdness factor).

    It looks much different from Tale of Two Sisters, but Lee Byeong-Woo composed this so I count that as a similarity as well. His work here, by the way, is fine - not as strong as his seminal work in the former film, and awfully showy, but there are some real highlights. He needs to keep the organs out of his compositions, though. Baaaaaadly.

    Anyway, this was vaguely involving if only for the lead performance - Hye-su Kim doesn't do "wild-eyed horror" very well, but her quieter emotional moments are strong and she pulls off her breakdown perfectly in the final act of the film. The child actress is good as well, despite the fact that her character is an unbelievable brat - even before the shoes are introduced, she obviously deserves a spanking. They play off each other well and I read a summary of the director's commentary about how they interacted that impressed me. I will also give The Red Shoes points for a twist toward the end that I didn't see coming, but then I'm going to take those points away for a subsequent stupid twist that doesn't make any sense. Anyway, these efforts aren't enough to make the movie good by any stretch, and for some reason it's incredibly unscary despite the technical prowess. I guess cursed shoes don't quite work.

    And on that note, the shoes are not red in any sense of the word. They are definitely pink. I took it to be a metaphor, like the shoes are bloodstained, but they are referred to as "red shoes" at least twice throughout the film. Uh...great job, guys.
  • newvogueravyn
    July 12, 2008
    newvogueravyn
    Slightly different to the usual Asian horror standard, it has some interesting images and a workable backstory to the shoes, but I wasn't especially taken with the film.
  • kiriyamakazou
    April 11, 2008
    kiriyamakazou
    A bunch of people cream themselves over a pair of shoes. Think a Brantanos advert crossed with Lord of the Rings. After the first half hour of me wondering if I should colour correct my TV (the shoes are pink, is the red because of blood? What?). I started enjoying it on its own ... read moreterms, as your everyday Asian horror. However the script has too many holes and annoying moments contained within to keep giving a hoot til the end. Who dies? Who cares? Some lovely visuals and individual horror like sketches but other than that it's a bit of a complicated waste.
  • Hellshocked
    February 8, 2009
    Hellshocked
    Two films fighting each other, either of which would have been better than this one. The result is far, far less than the sum of its parts.
  • chelano
    September 5, 2011
    chelano
    Ok the story line to this movie was pretty decent at first and I really got interested. But the movie stretched 20 minutes too long. for when it hit that part, the story took a turn and really threw me off. Doing this, I lost interest and just wanted it to end. But there are ... read moremany interesting scary and gory scenes to enjoy in this movie. Even in the 20 minutes that I hated. The cast was pretty good. The little girl who played Tae-soos was prety good. The main character played by Hye-su Kim was also good. I believe when Yong-gyun Kim had made this movie, he wanted the shoes to have a deeper meaning than just a killing tool. At parts you can really see some of the symbolism. At other parts, not so much. So it was a fun and interesting movie to watch, just needed a little more editing on the story front.
  • blizzpirate
    April 2, 2011
    blizzpirate
    very good movie, it felt very demonic and weird all the way through.... some very creepy scary parts.. It could have been creepier though, but this was an insane story and very good. I will perhaps fear the sight of any shoes that look like the ones in this movie for a while.... ... read morevery chilling and atmospheric... the story was abit too strange so it was kind of hard to understand some parts of it, and i know a few things that would have made it scarier in certain parts... the ending could have been better, i don't mean the scene in the credits , when the credits went all blurry the scene in the credits was brilliant.
    worth watching for sure unless you hate horror movies... this will creep you out and the sound effects are very eerie.
  • sitenoise
    June 27, 2008
    sitenoise
    The Red Shoes uses every Asian Horror motif we've seen many times before. Most notably the young, attractive, professional female lead who's got a cheating husband and a daughter that goes freaky. Its plot is constructed around some 'thing' that connects the natural and supernatu... read moreral worlds via the kid. There's a hip, interested, and understanding 'other man' hanging around, helping when he can. The infamous J-Horror Goth Chick even makes appearances. If all this is a deal breaker with regards to your viewing pleasure, skip this one. If it's not, then add it your queue immediately.

    The red shoes, usually referred to in the singular in this film, are really more of a fuchsia pink set of come find me pumps. The "Red" is surely meant to symbolize blood, as in "blood on your hands", but I digress.

    It's the production values of The Red Shoes that make it worthwhile. This is a good looking film whose creators clearly cared about doing it well. The cinematography is creepy and creative, accentuating the sense of dread with distortions, colors and inspired scene locations. The soundtrack is understated and almost peaceful--it's not used to create tension where none exists. And the script, typical of Asian Horror, is loose enough for the viewer to choose from a number of interpretive styles: is it a dream, a figment of some dreadful imagination, or is everybody a different aspect of a multiple personalty?

    The Red Shoes doesn't break any new ground but if you are a fan of the genre this is a professionally put together package.
  • chibimina7
    June 16, 2008
    chibimina7
    At first, I was wondering why the shoes were pink instead of red. Then I realized cuz it would have been hard to see the blood on it. I actually liked the shoes' shade of pink,...looks creepy...creepy shade of pink...
    but otherwise I liked it! (even though I only had the chance ... read moreto watch 1/2 of it)

View All The Red Shoes (Bunhong Shin) Reviews

Critic Reviews

Luke Y. Thompson
October 25, 2006
Luke Y. Thompson, LYTRules.com

There's some nice style and decent scares here, but at a certain point, I just started wanting them to get on with it. Full Review

Derek Elley
February 27, 2009
Derek Elley, Variety

Click to read the article Full Review

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