Red Riding Hood

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

Catherine Hardwicke's screw you to Summit Entertainment for being booted from the Twilight franchise. Her Werewolf is actually pretty badass. Unexpected. The rest was pretty much what I thought though.

The film is basically a whodunnit. Anyone could be the werewolf and everyone is suspicious. There is a really hopeless teen love triangle in there that may make you want to claw your eyes out Event Horizon style. Gary Oldman is on hand playing the priest and werewolf hunter. He's doing one of his big characters again but it's not too over the top.

One thing I will say, Hardwicke's sense of visual style seems to have matured greatly. I think that's in large part due to some fantastic production design and great huge sets. Shooting indoors with lighting rather than her previous more grungy doco style shot on the fly on location she produces a slick looking film. The snow looks a little fake and they overdose on the old smoke and fog, but still, it's a nice look. But you can tell they were indoors because almost every shot is a mid or a close up. There are only 2 or 3 wide shots that have been extended with digital mattes and as few sequences that looked shot out doors. It's not really a problem though, it does add to a claustrophobic feeling of being locked up inside a small village with as werewolf on the loose.

Despite the setting there are a lot of modern teen idiosyncrasies that squish there way into the film. I actually like the digital grading even though it's a very modern looks but the biggest culprit it the score. It stands out like a sore thumb, opting to use an indie guitar sound throughout. Especially over the "romantic" scenes which are very awkwardly handled but no where near as annoying as Twilight.

Lukas Haas, Julie Christie and Michael Hogan (Colonel Saul Tigh!!) are wasted. There were some girls behind me that seemed scared in some of the attack scenes but it didn't do much for me. If you want a good Red Riding Hood film I'd suggest checking out Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves. Or the awesomely exploitative Freeway, my personal favourite.