Red Riding Hood Review

Red Riding Hood Review

By Jose

Plot:

Set in a medieval village that is haunted by a werewolf, a young girl falls for an orphaned woodcutter, much to her family's displeasure.

Review:

Valerie (Seyfried) is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter (Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry the wealthy Henry (Irons). Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter are planning to run away together when they learn that Valerie's older sister has been killed by the werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village.

Before I go on I want to say that I love these fairy tales, especially Grimm’s fairy tales, which are darker and not as happily ever after compared to the cartoony versions. I felt Red Riding Hood attempted to keep that darkness while including the teen/cute cast vibe, and managed a pretty decent movie. Yes it had major flaws but it did deliver.

I will address the major flaw which was acting or lack thereof. Everyone in this movie, except a couple, basically read there lines and looked cute or read the lines and chased their checks. Except for Gary Oldman’s character (Solomon) and Max Irons (Henry) and Shiloh Fernandez (Peter). The three essentially over acted there respected parts. Or seemed like they overacted considering what I said earlier with the rest of the cast being cardboard cutouts. Irons, Oldman, and Fernandez were my favorite guys in the movie. Hell Amanda Seyfried, the main character Valerie, was “dead” in this movie. No emotion throughout the movie except for the love scenes and werewolf scenes and the rather well done end scene.

Now onto effects. The town was believable in a fantasy/medieval way. Deep scary woods and a snow covered town. The best looking piece was grandmothers house. A lone cottage, scary and cool looking, surrounded by these huge trees that had spikes growing out of them. Oh and the giant copper elephant hookah used for torture. Now the meat of the effects had to be the werewolf right? And it had better. The werewolf was all CGI and they did a really great job on it. They kept it simple. Making it an actual wolf, a rather large, dark and scary looking one. Really well done and thankfully done like this. Considering the way they could have went. I was happy with it.

I will now address the ending of the movie so if you are fearful of spoilers run away screaming now.
Throughout the movie we are left wondering to a degree who the werewolf is. There were the obvious three. Being Valerie, Peter, or Henry. At some point it became rather obvious that it would be Peter. But no it was not. The wolf turned out to be Valerie’s father. Interesting twist. A bit creepy considering an earlier conversation between the wolf and Valerie though. This choice actually caught me off guard because it felt obvious they were going with Peter being the werewolf. But it then occurred to me that Peter was supposed to play the part of the hunter.

Final Thoughts:

I liked this movie even though it had it’s problems. Especially at the end when everything came together and followed the story. I actually liked how at the end Peter and Valerie cut open the wolf and filled him up with stones and dumped him into the lake. That was actually part of one of the original stories I had read. Also the ending itself was really well done and rather romantic. A few months or couple of years past, don’t remember, Valerie is living by herself in her grandmothers home. She goes out to her garden during a full moon to pick flowers and while she does Peter as a werewolf comes into the clearing and looks at her and bows his head while Valerie smiles at him and bows too. I found that rather romantic and heartwarming.

Ratings: 3 out of 5