Red Riding Hood
I’m honestly quite divided on this film. On the one hand, it has all the literacy and subtlety of a “Twilight” film, which shouldn’t be surprising when you consider that Catherine Hardwicke, this film’s once-talented director (I mean, seriously, what happened to the director of “Thirteen” and “Lords of Dogtown”?), also directed the first film of that dramatically empty franchise. On the other hand, this new vision of the classic fairy tale has the visual beauty and Gothic atmosphere of the old Universal and Hammer horror classics. The question becomes: Which hand outweighs the other in overall impact? This is where I’m torn.
Amanda Seyfriend is lovely and sensual as Valerie, a young woman whose isolated town is haunted by the presence of a werewolf. For 20 years, the wolf has lived in seclusion, and the town has been at peace, although their animal offerings continue. One night, the wolf attacks and kills Valerie’s older sister, Lucy. The terror has returned. The town’s religious leader (Lukas Haas) has sent for the famous Father Solomon (Gary Oldman, always seeming to be up for a little ham), a werewolf hunter with a reputation. Meanwhile, Valerie is in the middle of another drama when her mother (Virginia Madsen) sets her up to marry the local blacksmith, Henry (Max Irons), although it’s the rebellious Peter (Shiloh Fernandez) with whom Valerie is in love.
Just by reading the description above, it should be plain to see how much David Johnson’s screenplay owes to the “Twilight” phenomenon. Hell, it’s like he took the classic Grimms fairy tale and sent it to Twilight author, Stephanie Meyer, to plot out the story and write the dialogue; seriously, people, do ANY Hollywood screenwriters know how to write GOOD dialogue anymore? Watch James Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein” or Tod Browning’s “Dracula” again and listen to the dialogue, which has a level of poetry and memorability most horror movies can’t touch nowadays. But it isn’t just the dialogue that doesn’t match up to the classics. Hardwicke tries really hard to achieve the same Gothic, tragic mood of those iconic monster movies; of course, that’s hard to do in vivid color on obvious sets, while a black-and-white film could have pulled it off beautifully; it’s far more difficult to achieve, however, with all the colors of the rainbow and dialogue and performances that are this shallow and melodramatic. Still, Hardwicke and her over-qualified cast (including Julie Christie and Billy Burke) manage some silly fun by chewing scenes like a werewolf with a bone. Just don’t be surprised if you feel hungry for something more afterward.
