2 out of 5

Director: Yong-gyun Kim

Atmospherically well done and with great music, Red Shoes is a mostly predictable entry into the Asian revenge-ghost genre that saves itself in the middle of its tale but drags it away with its codas. And the shoes arent red. Thats a basic guff here. Those things are pink. Anyhow: a single mother finds a pair of red (pink) shoes on the subway. Putting them on, she finds herself inclined to doll herself up and get all pretty. Alas, it seems the shoes cause incredible jealousy in those that spy them… the catch being that ill will befall those who steal the shoes from the owner. This slight tweak to the story was enough to validate 90 minutes… generally revenge stories are on a larger scale… having them tied to a small item was interesting. But you get your expected back history on the shoes and what gave them their ghosty power, and then a pretty unnecessary last minute revision of whats come before. The scary shots are well done, using the long-haired asian girl trope but not relying on it/her exclusively for the jumps. And the music is excellent. Its just that red shoes had the possibility of being a pretty average japanese ghost story, then lost faith in what it was doing in the last ten minutes.