It’s hard to imagine but Hollywood just never seems to be short of attempts to re-think and re-imagine “Red Riding Hood. And surely enough they never seem to think of an interesting enough idea for a franchise of any kind. I wish they’d stop by now. “Red Riding Hood” is Catherine Hardwicke’s efforts to transform “Red Riding Hood” in to this Puritanical, Stephanie Meyer tinted romance horror film that never works as well as it wants to.
Valerie is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter, but her parents have arranged for her to marry another man – who is wealthy. Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter plan to run away together when they learn that Valerie’s older sister has been killed by a werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. Hungry for revenge, the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon, to help them kill the wolf. But Solomon’s arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them.
Its pure intention is to appeal to the audience that invests heavily in “Twilight” or “Vampire Diaries” and the movies spares no expense in flaunting that kind of aspiration. Hardwicke’s movie is over directed, gaudy, and often very ugly to endure, all the while asking us to invest in this love triangle that’s so painfully old hat and obnoxious. The whole idea of this new version of Red Riding Hood being torn between an assigned husband and someone that she loves outside of her marriage arrangement amounts to zero entertainment value.
The whole idea of the wolf stalking random villages, forcing these various members of this society in to a mad scramble to take down the alleged werewolf feels so trite and overdone. Every trope here is so worn and tired from the mad hunter, the evil puritan patriarchs, the star crossed lovers, and so on. Hardwicke is a fine director pushed in to such a crummy movie, one that fails to completely rethink the whole concept of “Red Riding Hood.” For all intents and purposes, the cast are attractive and they add some interesting appeal to the marquee, but they all look like they’re sleepwalking through the film.
Even Amanda Seyfried herself looks ill fit for such a unique role like Red Riding Hood (or–Valerie), and never adds the intended dimension. Red Riding Hood is that grimm fairytale I wish Hollywood would quit trying to retrofit in to some modern fantasy epic, and “Red Riding Hood” does it no favors.
Editor’s note: This review was written by Felix Vasquez Jr earlier this year