Hyun-soo has never seen her father, but has never been too bothered about that since she have had such a loving mother. With her mother being a plastic surgeon, she's always surrounded by girls who want beauty consultations. But things takes a different turn when Hyun-soo's friends who have had facial surgery done by her mother starts to commit suicides. Not only that, but Hyun-soo starts to feel the presence of someone else being in the house that she and her mother lives in and when she one day discovers a hidden basement within the house, she also finds her mothers dark secret.
Having recently just seen the very good film To Sir, With Love which more than just proved that they can still make great horror flicks in Korea, watching Cinderella didn't really make me loose faith in Korean horror all over again, but was at the same time a big disappointment. The film was slow, or at least the first hour or so, and the scares...well, they were really nowhere to be found. As usual, the movie looked slick, the acting was above decent but the story wasn't captivating enough and there were really no other things in it to make up for that either. I would only say that this would be worth watching if you're a die hard fan that feel the very need to watch all the horror the country releases. If you're not like that, save yourself the headache and skip this one.
Cinderella, makes one think of the fairy-tale right. Well, forget about that because this is not the same, even if you might be able to draw some similarities between the stories. No one meets a prince or looses a shoe here, one actually looses her face though, so hey, there you go. This movie, Cinderella, is about a mother that has a daughter who happens to be in a accident at a young age which makes the kids face become disfigured. The mother soon meets a (missing) girl who mistakes her for her real mommy, and so the mother takes her in and names her Hyun-soo, the same name that she gave her real kid. Hyun-soo grows up and is one happy girl and lives an all right life with her mother being a plastic surgeon and all. But much later, her friends who have had facial surgery done by her mother starts to commit suicides, and from there, things just keeps getting worse.
 
There were a few scares within the first 60 minutes of the film, but so non-effective that it was hard staying interested. The thing is that the story was just not interesting enough, and was actually a bit confusing within the first hour. The last 30 minutes were better, but were still just not good enough to make up for the snoozefest that one had to sit through for about an hour. The confusion went out the window though and things got cleared up, but it was still hard to stay all focused on the film. It might have one or two totally all right scenes, but most of the horror it delivered turned out to be a real mess. Also, the pacing was a bit uneven and way too slow early on which made it hard to stay interested and focused on what was going on.
I thought Arang was quite a mess, but Cinderella turned out to be even worse. And like I said before, only reason why you would wanna watch it is if you're a die hard fan that feel the need to watch all the horror the country spits out, other than that, it was just not worth the time. I first thought that the fact that the film deals a great deal with plastic surgery, might could've added something from a horror point of view, but even though it had some elements of that, it just didn't work out too well. Actually, nothing in Cinderella worked out too well.
Yet another horror flick that didn't do it on the horror front. It looked good like they always do, but with that you only get so far. I won't say that the story was all bad because it had some potential, but unfortunately I found it very hard to stay interested all the way through. Give it a shot if you like, but don't expect anything.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Sin-de-rel-la
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: ?
WRITING CREDITS: Son Kwang-soo
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Do Ji-won, Sin Se-kyeong, Yoo Da-in
COUNTRY: South Korea
RUNTIME: 94 min
RATING: 3/10
Cinderella Website/IMDB Click here
Cinderella Trailer Click here
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