Red Riding Hood

Last weekend, we had Beastly, a modern day take on Beauty and the Beast. It was terrible. This weekend brings us Red Riding Hood, an update on the children's story that (despite an unspecified place and time) seems to be set in a little medieval village on the outskirts of a dark forest, but is told with very modern sensibilities to attract the Twilight crowd. It is not quite as terrible, but still struggles to reach the level of mediocrity.

Director Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) seems to be going for a dream-like fantasy look with the world she's created for her story. Sometimes it works, such as when we get a couple brief stunning shots of the heroine's impossibly long, red flowing cloak against the snow-white surroundings of the winter woods. Most of the time, however, the settings look all too much like a sound stage at the studio. There's a scene early in the film where two children (a little girl, and a boy) are in forest, catching a rabbit in a crude trap, then discussing the best way to kill and skin it. The entire time, I was looking at the plastic-looking grass they were standing in, and the obviously painted sky backdrop, and wondering who the filmmakers were trying to kid.

The film cuts to 10 years later, and that little girl has grown up to be Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), the town beauty who always wears her red cloak that her grandmother (Julie Christie) made for her. Grandma lives in a cabin in the middle of the woods that surrounds Valerie's village. Also in said forest is a murderous werewolf, who appears whenever there's a full moon. The villagers somehow have made some sort of arrangement with the beast. They offer up one of their livestock whenever there's a full moon, and the wolf leaves them alone. But recently, the wolf has started breaking the pact, and killing the locals. The most recent victim has been Valerie's sister. This trauma does not affect Valerie as much as one would think, as she's currently preoccupied with a love triangle.

You see, Valerie is in love with Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), a woodsman who has been her sweetheart since childhood. Her parents (Virginia Madsen and Billy Burke), however, want her to marry Henry (Max Irons), the local blacksmith, since he makes more money. The whole "village being attacked by a ravenous werewolf" thing seems to matter little to Valerie, who is torn between two hunky, but equally wooden and personality-deprived young men. Still, the plot must go on. With the wolf attacks on the rise, the local priest (Lukas Haas) sends away for a famed witch hunter and werewolf killer named Solomon (Gary Oldman). Solomon arrives with soldiers, guards, and a giant metal elephant, which he uses as a torture device later on. He also warns the villagers that the wolf most likely takes human form when there is not a full moon, so the killer could be any one of them.

It's at this point that Red Riding Hood turns into sort of a gothic horror murder mystery, with everyone being thrown under suspicion at one point. Though it relies a bit too heavily on red herrings, the screenplay by David Johnson (Orphan) does at least keep us guessing as to who the identity of the wolf is. This is where the movie comes closest to working, even if the payoff is disappointing. The problem with the mystery element is that the movie never manages to find the right tone of building dread. There's no sense of terror or urgency. It's not even all that scary when the wolf itself shows up to terrorize the villagers, thanks to the shoddy CG work on the creature. There are some intriguing ideas within the whole mystery, especially with how Solomon manages to turn the entire town against each other, with everyone throwing accusations upon everyone else, much like the Salem Witch Trials. These ideas, however, are never fully fleshed out, due to one element of the film that never fails to drag everything down.

That would be the love triangle at the middle of it all. While Seyfried brings a certain wide-eyed innocence to her role, Fernandez and Irons, as the male suitors, are completely bland and lacking in personality. Even when both of them are supposed to be under suspicion at different points, they don't manage to create any real emotions, because their performances are just plain dead in the water. Despite the romance angle being a big selling point for the studio, it actually winds up being the most forgettable part of the movie. Seyfried is at her best when she's alone. When she's supposed to act like she's attracted to these two hollow hunks, she seems just as lost and confused as I was as to what she was supposed to see in these guys.

If you want to see a modern, sex-driven take on the classic fairy tale, I would recommend Neil Jordan's 1984 film, The Company of Wolves, over this. Red Riding Hood has a couple of intriguing elements, but it's brought down by the central love story, the mostly flat directing style of Hardwicke, and the leisurely tone of the film itself. This is a movie that takes its time getting to where it's going. Once it's there, we have to ask if the trip was really necessary.

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