There is, I am sure, an audience for Red Riding Hood. My best guess is that it is made up of the same hormonal teenage girls, and depressed, middle aged women who are responsible for the Twilight franchise taking nearly two billion dollars at the box office. If you recognise yourself in this description, you won’t be disappointed. By anything. Ever.
Like Twilight the film contains identikit, charisma-less, clothes horses mouthing their way through awful dialogue, and failing to create anything resembling sexual tension, so book your tickets now. And while you’re at it, probably best to pre-order the DVD, and make some ‘team Henry’ T-shirts as well.
More to the point, if you fit this description, you probably won’t want to read this review. I’m going to say some pretty nasty things about the film, and I’m going to spoil the ‘surprise twist’, so look away now.
That means spoilers if you carry on so only read on if you dare!
Still with me?
Good.
Red Riding Hood is rubbish. It’s badly written, it’s stupid, and it’s lazy, lowest common denominator filmmaking at its worst, on a par with anything Michael Bay has churned out recently. Still, it’s not actually bad. If it were, it would almost be excusable. It would certainly provide some camp enjoyment. Instead it’s simply, unrelentingly bland. The cinematic equivalent of eating a bowl of Corn Flakes, in a room with magnolia walls while listening to James Blunt*. An utter waste of time, money and effort.
We could have had an exceptional film, or at least an entertaining one. The high concept is intriguing enough: the story of a girl on the verge of womanhood, who confronts a beast from within her community, while also confronting her own sexual desires. This idea, which we were actually sold in the trailers, could well have been a modern take on The Company of Wolves.
Instead we got chaste sexual fantasies for people who never have sex, played out by robots with hair that’s been gelled to within an inch of its life.
Actually, I’m being entirely unfair to the cast. While none of them are going to win an Oscar for their performances, they do the best they possibly can with the material at hand. Gary Oldman in particular tries desperately to make the film enjoyable, as does Michael Hogan, who is essentially playing Battlestar Galactica’s Col. Tigh, but is at least having some fun while he does so.
There are elements of the film that are vaguely interesting: The mystery surrounding the identity of the werewolf; the isolated community, beset by monsters; the troubled adolescent girl, at war with those around her. Yet not one of these manages to hook the audience. It’s true none of these are new ideas, and each has been done better by other films, Company of Wolves, Ravenous and Ginger Snaps spring to mind, but they really shouldn’t have fallen as flat as they did.
The one remotely original idea was that the Oldman’s character, a hunter of werewolves brought in to save the village, is actually a much greater threat than the wolf itself. Indeed, this alone could have been the basis of an engaging, intelligent film. Unfortunately, with any sort of edge the movie may have had dulled, and with an emphasis on the ‘love’ triangle between the film’s leads, this is relegated to a sub-plot that never quite works.
And it’s far from the only idea that doesn’t work. One plot strand involves the paternity of Valerie’s sister. As it turns out, her mother is the village bicycle, and she is revealed to be the accidentally incestuous, half-sister of Max Iron’s Henry. We also have several contenders for village idiot, who aren’t so much characters as walking, dribbling plot devices, and Valerie’s mother, who insists that Valerie marries the son of the wealthiest man in the village**, having inexplicably not married his father twenty years before hand.
It may well be that somewhere on a cutting room floor are the other strands of these plots, that make them fit together, and allow them to make sense. It’s probably not the case, but you never know.
And then there’s the ‘twist’ ending.
The wolf is her father.
To comprehend how stupid this is, you would have to see the film. As a rough guide though, it is vaguely analogous to me showing you a line up of possible murder suspects, and then revealing to you that it was committed by the pot plant in the corner. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Consequently, when it comes to light, we get ten minutes of ridiculous exposition trying to justify the development, rather than a neat recap of cleverly laid plot threads one would expect from a big reveal.
There’s more to say about the film. About how cheap it feels, about Hardwicke’s hit-and-miss direction. About the member of Gary Oldman’s retinue who should be significant because he’s the only one who wears a helmet throughout, but turns out to be utterly irrelevant. About the message this sends to teenage girls about what they should expect out of life. About the ropey CGI wolf. About everything, but it doesn’t deserve it.
Don’t see this movie.
[Rating:1/5] – and that’s for the soundtrack.
*Actually, that’s unfair. I’ve implied that the soundtrack is middle of the road, easy listening music. It isn’t. Instead it’s actually very good, featuring a score that is clearly inspired by the Ravenous soundtrack, and a number of pumping electro-pop tunes by Fever Ray, aka ‘that girl from The Knife’.
**Don’t get too excited. It seems that the only thing that sets him apart as more wealthy than anyone else is the ability to make crap jewellery and to be played by a man who was once on Stargate: SG1
