Movie Review: ‘RED RIDING HOOD’

The fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood can be a brutal one, or it can be a story of a vicious wolf stealing a grandmother’s wardrobe, hiding her in closet in a ploy to try to eat Little Red Riding Hood.  I was always told the version that the wolf ate the grandmother in order to eat Little Red Riding Hood, which made more sense on an animalistic approach. 

The village of Daggerthorn is crippled by fear of a werwolf that pays them a visit every full moon.  The residents have got in the habit of accepting this and put out a sacrificial animal as a peace offering to the supernatural beast.  Once the truce is broken and a girl is slain, it is decided that the village will not stand for it any longer.  Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) is called in to try to find the werewolf and kill it.  Of course, I just gave you the main plot.  Beneath it is the story of our Red Riding Hood – outfit by Grandmother – named Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) and the love triangle she is in.  See, she loves Peter (Deadgirl‘s Shiloh Fernandez)  but her family demands she marry Henry (Max Irons).  Henry is about to a big figure in his future, so the parents obviously want the best for Valerie.  Damn the ol’ days and its ideologies.

I’ll cut to the chase.  The film tries to be a Twilight esque film.  Let’s not kid ourselves, it’s pretty apparent.  However, in the audience I saw this with which was mixed with adults and teens alike, the film fails to capture the swoon that Twilight did.  The problem with Red Riding Hood is with it’s direction.  All the actors involved have been in better films and have acted better in other films yet they seem to wonder around clueless inside this film without motivation.  The film cannot grasp if it wants to be a gothic horror film that is light on the gore/blood or a teenage romance story.  The film tries to blend both but unfortunately, it is like mixing oil and water. 

The restraint of gore/blood/violence in Hardwicke’s werewolf ends up hindering the story to the point where inconsistencies pop up.  At the beginning of the film, we are shown that Valerie’s sister is the human that is killed by the wolf, killed by 3 scratches down her torso.  However, near the end when the audience finds out who the lycanthrope is, we are shown a flashback scene to when the sister was staring down the beast lunging for her head in her final moments.  Are we to believe the werewolf came inches of her face and decided to defy gravity and just give her a scratch?

Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood tries to take this minimalistic tale and flesh it out into a 90 minute story, which could have worked to her advantage.  Unfortunately, due to – what I believe is –  her botched direction, the film instead is a 90 minute waste of time.  There is no emotional connection to the characters that are introduced to us. The film is laughable in its best (read: worst) moments.

One of the best things of Red Riding Hood is the use of a new song by Fever Ray called “The Wolf”.  Thank god for you, you can hear it via Soundcloud.  I have embedded below.

Fever Ray – The Wolf by AndrewDiego