Red Riding Hood (2011)
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke
Starring: Amanda Seyfried (what big EYES you have!) Lukas Haas (What big EARS you have!) and Gary Oldman (What big TEETH you have…ALL the better to chew the scenery with, my dear!)
Oh my goodness, horror fans! We’re only three months into 2011 and already we might have a contender for the title of “Horror Gooker of the Year” aka, “This year’s
Wicker Man”. Now, I want to stress here that
Red Riding Hood is NOT a terrible film to sit through by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I actually enjoyed myself immensely; though I must say, I do not think I enjoyed myself for the reasons director Catherine Hardwicke and stars Seyfried and Oldman intended me to. No, this movie is one of the most unintentionally hilarious horror films to come out of the gates possibly since Nicolas Cage donned a bear suit and got a face full of bees in Neil LaBute’s
Wicker redux. I honestly think that this version of Red Riding Hood’s classic tale will go down as one of those “so bad that it comes around to being good again” films.
To say that
Red Riding Hood models itself after a certain other tween age girl masturbation-fest named
Twilight would be a very accurate assessment, (and not all all surprising considering that Hardwicke directed THAT film as well) though
Red Riding Hood has the benefit of a MUCH better lead actress in Amanda Seyfried, and a much better supporting cast including the awesome Gary Oldman and the solid and reliable Virginia Madsen. And hey, for you Twi-hards out there, you might just notice Bella Swan’s dad once again playing, well, Bella Swan’s dad pretty much as Red’s father in this movie. Is there some rule that says that that poor bastard HAS to play the father to a teenage girl in love with two guys at once who simply WILL not choose one over the other? Jeeze.
Anyway, this is the story of a woodcutter’s daughter named Valerie (Seyfried) a comely young lass whose family has arranged for her to marry wealthy young blacksmith Henry. Problem is, Valerie doesn’t love Henry, she loves a strapping young woodcutter named Peter (*snicker*), and she loves Peter so much (*giggle*) that she and Peter devise a plan to elope together, because for once in a movie, a girl wants LOVE more than MONEY; I guess this movie really IS a fantasy after all! EYYYYY! (Does “Diceman” pose, is roundly booed by the females in the audience).
Moving along, Valerie grabs Peter (*chortle*) and they try to make a break for it; however at just that moment, the town’s
air-raid alarm Wolf Raid Alarm sounds and their escape is thwarted. Seems that the Big Bad Wolf has struck again, and this time it has claimed the life of Valerie’s own sister! This tragedy is enough to put elopement on hold for Peter and Valerie, and work the town’s men into a huntin’ frenzy. See, for years the village had held an uneasy truce with the beast, offering it animal sacrifices in exchange for leaving the people of the village alone. Well, old Mr. Werewolf has said “to hell with that deal!” and grabbed him some human hors doerves. Thus the menfolk grab their pitchforks, swords, knives, ect and head out to the forest to kill them a werewolf, lead of course by Henry and his father, though Peter won’t be beaten by Henry in the machismo race, and he tags along as well.
Soon the group comes to a cave, which has two branches; Henry and his father take one branch and the rest of the group takes the other. Guess who gets the “lucky branch” of this cave system?
{Spoiler}In one of the movie’s only legit scares, its Henry and his father who meet the real werewolf, while the other villagers and Peter go on to come face to face with a huge timber wolf
.
So the group returns to the village, with Henry's dead Daddy and one DAMN dead timber wolf. Now the movie takes a page out of JAWS of all f*****g things, (as if straight copying the Bella/Edward/Jacob love triangle from
Twilight wasn’t enough) and they commence to parading the head of the timber wolf in the town’s square for all to see. One man however, is not convinced that this is the true wolf.
Matt Hooper Father Auguste (played by a wide-eyed and sort of elfin looking Lukas Haas) is not questioning that they got A wolf…just that they might not have gotten THE wolf. Sound familiar? In a bar full of huntsmen and woodcutters, he’s roundly laughed right out of the place, as the village commences a wild party celebrating both the wolf’s demise, and the rich history of Henry’s father’s life. Father Auguste is not in a celebratory mood, however; it is revealed that he sent for a notorious werewolf killer named Father Solomon right after Valerie’s sister died, and he slips away to await the arrival of his hero, and this movie’s Quint to his Hooper.
Speaking of Valerie, she makes her first visit to Grandmother’s house after the big hunt, and is given her trademark red-shawl as a wedding present from Grams. Oops. Guess Grammy don’t know about Valerie and her love of Peter. Valerie returns to the village just in time to see her father getting s***faced drunk and vomiting on himself, and her boy toy Peter doing what is supposed to be an erotic dance with another young girl named Prudence. I might mention here that the villagers are ALL dressed up like they’re attending some sort of bizarre cross between Furry-Con and Mardi Gras, and the severed wolf head is stuck on a pike and is being passed around like a party favor. What the f*** the point of this whole scene was, I have no clue, but it’s so out there that it’s damn near hilarious….and that’s before Seyfried decides to grab another chick and do an “erotic” dance of her own to make Peter jealous. I should note that said erotic dance is just about as erotic as an Amish square-dance. But somehow, it revs Petey’s engine, and he breaks off with his girl, grabs Valerie, and the two make for the hayloft for some hot PG-13 lovemakin’. Too bad for the indecisive Valerie that Henry sees this whole thing, and is not in the least happy about it….and before things can get bogged down further in this little love triangle the
Werewolf DIRE WOLF arrives!
{Spoiler} You know, I roundly blame Stephenie Meyer’s stupid ass for this, but if something is half-man and half wolf, it’s a werewolf. If it is a HUGE F*****G WOLF, then it is what is known as a dire wolf, and if it can shift between dire wolf and human form AT WILL, it is a goddamn SHAPESHIFTER. Knowing the difference is half the battle. Throughout this film, this animal is called a werewolf, but it is a Twilight-ized shape shifting dire wolf…and it can SPEAK to Bella Valerie! *SIGH*
So yeah, this big ass black dire wolf crashes the party, goes all
American Werewolf in London on some villagers, and backs Valerie into a corner before SPEAKING to her through telepathy (!) and urging her to run away with it. Valerie stands there, just about as stunned as you or I would be if a big goddamn wolf just spoke to us telepathically, so the wolf rips apart another villager out of sheer spite and warns Valerie that unless and until she comes away with it, the killings will continue. Then it vanishes into the night from whence it came; important to note that right about here is where the movie begins to set up a “whodunit” type of side story, as both Henry and Peter are suspiciously absent when this wolf attack occurs.
The next day, Gary Oldman’s Father Solomon arrives to SAVE_US from all this teen angst. And boy, does he EVER make and entrance. Oldman is in full on Nic Cage “Wicker Man” mode here, overacting, over-emoting, and saving this movie from itself through the sheer power of his hamming it up. Solomon arrives in a carriage flanked by the most badass knights this side of a Fallout game, and towing a f*****g COLOSSAL steel elephant, which is being ridden by another badass knight in badass armor. As Solomon steps out of his carriage and kisses his kids goodbye the knights flanking said chariot remove their helmets to reveal……THEY’RE BLACK! BLACK KNIGHTS! Oh my God, if that wasn’t an intentional Monty Python reference, then whoever snuck that in there ought to be nominated for an Academy Award for slyest in-joke in a movie. These badass black brothas scan the all-white villagers with hate and distrust, and the villagers seem more shocked at the sight of these two towering, powerful black men than they do the sight of the literal elephant in the room. Hmmm….GIANT GODDAMN METAL ELEPHANT….*shrug*. BLACK men? Oh the horror! What ARE these things? Where DO they come from? :rolleyes:
That bit of blatantly racist scriptwriting aside (though I guess in its defense it IS plausible that the villagers might not have ever seen a black person before, though WHERE the hell they could have seen a giant metal elephant before, and on such a regular basis as to be more used to IT than to the sight of a black person is a question the movie never answers, so I’m still picking on it for that) Solomon wastes no time in picking up where the lemur-eyed Auguste left off, reciting the bit about “you caught A wolf, not THE wolf” and throwing in a goodly dose of paranoia as well, introducing the mystery angle of the film by telling the villagers that the wolf is indeed a shape shifter and that by day, it could be ANY ONE OF THEM.
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN!
I swear, if they would have had Oldman give the “I’ll find him for five, catch him and kill him for ten. For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing” speech, I would have marked out harder than a little girl marking for John Cena. Alas, it is not to be, though Solomon wastes no time in assuming control of the village, with little to no resistance from the villagers, locking the place down, enacting a curfew, and beginning a systematic search of every hut in the village. Damn it, he’s going to FIND this wolf, if it’s the last thing he does! Indeed, Solomon is so obsessed with finding the wolf that he ends up revealing the true purpose of that HUGE elephant: it’s a take on the old Greek “brazen bull” which for those of you who don’t know your torture history at home, was a hollowed out brass bull that people who were suspected of high crimes were tossed into…while a fire was lit underneath it, essentially heating the brass animal to such degrees that it turned into an oven, roasting the poor victim alive. Solomon’s first victim? The town’s retarded boy-child, who was reportedly missing during the wolf attack. The scene where Gary Oldman flings this retarded kid into the “brazen bull elephant” is ALMOST as hilarious as Nic Cage’s bee scene from
Wicker Man, and indeed several audience members in my theater were laughing at this scene….again, I don’t think that’s the reaction that the film was going for there. But it’s SO over the top that you cannot HELP but giggle.
Red Riding Hood is a film that is trying like hell to play to the
Twilight demographic, but inadvertently ends up playing to an older, more jaded audience with its own goofiness and Gary Oldman’s off-the-chain overacting. This movie is more enjoyable than it has any right to be, and the climax HAS to be one of the most implausible, over-reaching werewolf kills in cinematic HISTORY.
All in all, I say this film is worth checking out. Giving the devil its due, Amanda Seyfried is a perfect Red Riding Hood with her anime features and guileless face, and Gary Oldman…well, he steals the show, to be quite honest. It’s not a GOOD movie, but it’s not terrible either. In fact, it’s quite fun if you go into it with the proper expectations. *** and a half stars out of five.