I've been on an Amanda Seyfried kick lately. I seem to be watching a lot of movies starring her, the last being Chloe. I'm not sure why so many of her movies draw me in, but it might have something to do with her status as a rising star in Hollywood. Or the fact that she's attractive. Either way, it probably isn't the movies. I'd be open to watching Mean Girls, but I draw the line at Mamma Mia!, as a rule. This also goes for several other movies designed for the fairer sex, like Beastly and the omnipresent Twilight series.
Despite being marked as being an imitator of the Twilight franchise, I found myself drawn to Red Riding Hood. The most likely reason being Miss Seyfried, but I also had an academic curiosity to see what was done with the story of the legendary little crimson-covered child.
Said child is little no longer: Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is a willful young woman, promised to the blacksmith's son, Henry (Max Irons) in marriage by her mother Suzette (Virginia Madsen). Alas, she loves the woodcutter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) and has done so since they were children. They want to run away and live free, but a murder in their village of Darkmoor brings them back to reality. The culprit: a wolf that preys on their village that takes a sacrifice of a living being to sate its bloodlust on a full moon. Now the wolf is back, and draws an even more dangerous enemy into the midst of Darkmoor--this time, a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Father Solomon (the scene-chewing Gary Oldman) and his armed escort roll into town in an armored carriage, bristling with weapons. The good father says such things are necessary in his line of work--as a hunter of devils, demons, witches, warlocks and werewolves. To wit, he reminds people that he is willing to go to great lengths to find out who is the werewolf in Darkmoor. Yes, they're dealing with a werewolf and it lives in the town. Soon, Father Solomon has people accusing each other of witchcraft and of being the werewolf. The chaos spreads fast, but not enough to slow the romantic subplot down at all.
The sexual tension is so thick, you could cut it with a knife. Heap on the extra layers of lies and the mystery of who the werewolf could be, and you have a fine movie. Some might even say it's lame because it is slavish to the original, or not slavish enough to the original. If the audience can't relate to Valerie by virtue of teenager problems, you just blew a wad of cash on kiddie porn or a poorly visualized juvenile fantasy (see: Robin Williams' Toys). If Valerie doesn't make it to Grandma's house or have that ears/eyes/teeth conversation, then the story told is baseless.
The movie has a story to tell, and it does so admirably with all the history of the original supporting information with modern twists. I especially liked what they did with all the different versions of Little Red Riding Hood (there's more than one) and other wolf-related fairy tales, like the Boy Who Cried Wolf and the Three Little Pigs. The movie's got some pretty chaste gore effects that do an effective job of conveying the carnage in the film. For a movie directed by the woman who directed Twilight, starring a man who played the lead's father in both that film and this one (Billy Burke), it's not as bad as people make it out to be. Ultimately, the only ones who would hate this movie would be Twilight haters.
And yet I still liked it.
CHOICE CUTS:
- You'll find sci-fi actors from SyFy in the movie: Michael Shanks (aka Dr. Daniel Jackson of Stargate:SG-1) and Michael Hogan (Col. Saul Tigh of the Battlestar Galactica remake). Judging by the SyFy Original Movies, one more SyFy actor and the movie might have taken a nosedive in quality.
- The cinematography is amazing, as is the visual design. The super-long bright red cape against the snow reminds me of the PS2 video game Shinobi.
- Never did find out what was in the meat stew in Grandma's house...
- Those are some thorny ass trees. Almost as if someone put them there so that stray clothing could be ripped away in flight from a menacing beast, or if said beast was launched into the air to be impaled. Generally, they looked like overgrown rose stems.
- Why would you use white text in your credits over shots of a snow field ans snowy mountains? I don't make movies, so maybe someone else could explain this...
- The beginning of the movie is amazing: it is warm colors at first, reaching into autumn. Then once the murder is found out, it begins to snow...AND IT STAYS THAT WAY FOR THE REST OF THE MOVIE. That is a really nice touch.
- I guessed that the movie was shot in Iceland or another Nordic country, but it turns out the entire movie was shot in Vancouver, BC--home of amazing geography.
For all the people who say this is derivative of Twilight, that's OK. At least the actress who portrays the main character has more than one facial expression. Thankfully, Red Riding Hood doesn't completely crap all over a monster mythology in the process of telling the story. This was achieved by a simple fact: werewolves can't sparkle.
RATING: 7/10
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