Red Riding Hood [M]

Valerie is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. Arranged to marry one, and desperately in love with the other, Valerie is spared the difficult task of choosing between the two when the werewolf that plagues her village takes the life of her sister. Eager for revenge, the villagers call in the help of famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon. But the arrival of the Father brings only doubt and fear as he warns them that the wolf, which takes human form by day, could be any one of them. 

For a so-called “horror” film, Red Riding Hood did not pack much of a punch. There was nothing inherently suspenseful, gory, startling, or indeed horrific about this film at all. A more adult take on the grim fairy tale, Red Riding Hood was a rather predictable and pointless film that I, personally feel, was below the talents of Amanda Seyfried and Gary Oldman, who were undoubtedly the only good things about it. They were the whole reason I hired the movie in the first place. 

Valerie is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. Arranged to marry one and desperately in love with the other, Valerie is spared the difficult task of deciding between the two when the werewolf that plagues her village takes the life of her sister. Eager for revenge, the villagers call in the help of famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon. But the Father’s arrival brings only doubt and fear as he warns them all that the wolf, which takes human form whilst the sun is up, could be any one of them. 

The arrival of the good Father, played wonderfully by Gary Oldman, may have brought fear, doubt, unprecedented suspicion, and uncertainty to the villagers, but none whatsoever to the audience. I’ll admit that there were occasional moments when your mind accused each character in turn of being the wolf, but ultimately it was the over exaggerated camera movements, and psychical flashbacks that just ruined the entire thing and made it rather predictable. 

It’s obvious that Catherine Hardwicke has some sort of romantic attachment to the camera. Just like in Twilight, a great portion of this movie is devoted to fast-moving and spiralling areal shots of the snow-capped mountains and thick forests with the remainder of the movie seeing the camera literally following the actors as though sneaking up on them. That style of camera work does play an important role in most horror films, but in the case of Red Riding Hood, the technique was used excessively and therefore, caused the film to lose any potential for suspense that it had in the first place. Unlike The Shining and Nightmare of Elm Street, the camera following the actors did not send shivers down the spine, but merely gained blank looks and sidelong glances at the player to see how much more of the movie is left to endure. 

AND I’M NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE ENDING! You’ll have to watch the movie if you’re at all curious to see how fantastically stupid it was. 

Starring Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons, Lukas Haas, Virginia Madsen, and Julie Christie, Red Riding Hood was a predictable and pointless horror film. Filled with half-hearted gore, romantic conflictions, murder, and the supernatural, I can say that I’ve seen it and that’s the end of it.