Film Review: Red Riding Hood

You can never quite prepare for how stupid a film is going to be, because quite often in trailers they only choose to show slight flashes of stupidity. Red Riding Hood didn't hold back. You could tell from the trailers that this was going to be a total waste of your time, but not quite in the way you expected. This film is as much a remake of Twilight to include the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" as the 1907 short The Teddy Bears is an adaptation of Teddy Roosevelt's famed bear killing to fit in the story of "Goldie Locks and the Three Bears". There are obvious similarities that make it distracting, but both features are generally deplorable for their own reasons.

Red Riding Hood takes place in a quaint little village that you learn about half an hour in is called Daggerhorn. Clever exposition clearly isn't this film's strong suit, because they barely introduce the threat of the wolf before it kills the main protagonist's sister, who we also didn't learn about beforehand. What do we learn in the beginning? Valeria, played by Amanda Seyfried, is romantically involved with a lumberjack named Peter, who is more rugged and handsome than he has any right to be. Unfortunately, she's been arranged to marry Henry Lazar, who we also do not meet beforehand, and when the whole conspiracy of who in the village is the wolf comes into play, she won't trust anyone.

Even though she's in the presence of both Peter and Henry during different wolf attacks, she still suspects them for some stupid inane reason. Speaking of stupidity, after the townspeople kill a regular wolf, mistaking it for the actual werewolf, Father Solomon, played with maniacal vigor by Gary Oldman, comes around to explain exactly what a werewolf is. The man is a priest who is willing to murder his wife, who was a werewolf, in order to defeat evil. The man kills innocent civilians on holy ground, not to mention a fellow priest, and tortures a mentally deficient kid for what he perceives as "Black Magic". The kid pulled a card from behind a man's ear. Is this film really that stupid?

Oh, and you have no idea who exactly the wolf is in this film. It's kind of hinted at briefly, but they mostly just lead obvious hints to different characters. They keep showing off stupid camera tricks with the annoyingly cheery grandmother. Here's one thing that I can't get out of my head, though. Valerie is betrothed to Henry, whose father once had sex with her mother, and the offspring was Valerie's older sister Lucy. Lucy had a crush on Henry (ew), and even though the adults knew all of this, they still arranged for Valerie to be married to Henry? Gross! Stupid! What the hell is wrong with this village? They're all idiots!

If this film were Twilight then Valerie would be Bella, Peter would be Edward, Henry would be Jacob, and Billy Burke would be the main character's father, which he is. Henry even gives Valerie a little charm to carry with her. You could write a thesis paper on how similar these two stupid films are. The acting in this film is ridiculous, with Gary Oldman being perhaps the only exception. You hate his character, but not his performance. The look of the film is so quaint and fairy tale pretty that it makes you want to puke. They don't know how to direct the audience's attention. Besides that, Catherine Hardwicke just doesn't know how to direct. Red Riding Hood is a festival of stupidity, and in a few months, teens are going to be sending each other YouTube clips about how stupid this film is.

F