Film review: Red Riding Hood
MANILA, Philippines - The wolf has never had a good press. In folklore, fairy tales and horror movies, it’s always the villain — bugaboo, monster, hound seeking its prey, menace to society, threat to life. The notoriety is richly-deserved because the mammal is physically intimidating, stealthy, aggressive, voracious, ferocious, frightful. The Hollywood werewolf has only worsened the wolf’s public image especially among moviegoers who can believe they or someone else could be half-man, half-beast.
In fairy tales, among the most well-known wolves are one that attacks the houses of three cute, famous little pigs and Aesop’s wolves, among them one in sheep’s clothing and another lusting after a bunch of grapes.
Many of us grew up knowing this tiny little story about a little girl called Little Red Riding Hood who crosses the forest alone to bring food to her reclusive grandma, a path that’s like Manhattan’s Central Park at night, with hazards every step of the way.
So now we have a new movie that will not improve the wolf’s status in fiction and entertainment history. The movie re-imagines the tale now called Red Riding Hood. The Little has been dropped from the title because the character who plays the wholesome, nice girl isn’t a little girl anymore. The original wisp of a girl exposed to peril would have been very disturbing to viewers, especially children. (Come to think of it, it would be hard to cast a little Red Hood now; there has been no child actress to capture viewers’ imagination since Drew Barrymore did in E.T. almost 30 years ago).
Rising actress Amanda Seyfried is right for the part. In a matter of three years, she has blossomed into a lovely woman and a good actress. In such a time, she has shared stellar billing with great actresses — Vanessa Redgrave in Letters to Juliet, Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia, and now Ms. Christie (an Oscar predictably will fall on Seyfried’s lap one of these days). Her Red Riding Hood’s Valerie is meant for the teen market.
The caveat is that the movie bears little resemblance to the original “fairy tale.” Some basic elements are incorporated in the movie — her red hooded dress, her journey across the woods, her beloved grandma (smartly played by Julie Christie), and the Big, Bad Wolf — but consider this a different story, almost an adult one, with a mix of horror and romance, a love triangle.
During the first minutes of the movie, the story seems to take up a social issue — arranged marriages, but soon this is abandoned and the tone shifts to whodunit. This is when the wolf literally leaps into the picture and some powerful cleric (Gary Oldman) spewing medieval fire and brimstone and with Ahab-like determination, shows up to form a posse of sort and tortures anybody who gets in his way. Oldman’s fierceness makes him as bad as the dreaded wolf itself.
The intrigue is that the rampaging wolf may at daylight be one of the ordinary folk. Oldman sows such fear and distrust that one suspects his friend, neighbor, parent, boyfriend to be the killing machine.
Much of the time, the viewers are asked to make their own who-done-it guess. Is it one of Valerie’s two romantic interests (Shiloh Fernandez and Max Irons), so that there may be some twist, a heartthrob who is really it? Could it be her mom (Virginia Madsen) who has a mysterious past, or her dad (Billy Burke) who is attached to the bottle, or maybe the person who would be the last suspect, the grandmother?
In one scene, a distraught Valerie imagines grandma Christie beside her in bed looking weird. Maybe she is the werewolf? This is where the fairy tale’s popular dialogue is used: Grandma, you have such large eyes! The better to see you, dear… And you have such big teeth! The better to eat you with, my dear.
Director of the movie is Catherine Hardwicke, who is responsible for the megahit Twilight and Lords of Dogtown, both stories populated by attractive, youthful stars (she also did the movie The Nativity Story). She knows the movie’s target market — young people. And true enough, one could see bits of Twilight here: The young girls ripe for the bugbear’s picking, the pretty boys, the romantic angle, the mystery, the terror.
But the movie is more atmospheric and grim, more terrifying than Twilight. Moviegoers are effectively glued to the romance, action and the menace and how people react to it. The claustrophobic setting adds to the gloomy mood, while the constant snowfall makes one feel the chill. All the time, even when not seen, the wolf imposes its vile presence. It’s a horror thriller that’s fun and worth one’s movie time. And the wolf isn’t even shown for more than a few seconds each time.