Red Riding Hood (C-)

A well-crafted story fizzles out with a particularly lazily-constructed ending.

In the middle ages, a young lady named Valerie (Amanda Seyfried) is being forced by her parents (Billy Burke and Virginia Madsen) to marry a gentlemanly (and wealthy) young man (Max Irons) when she wants to marry a bad boy woodcutter (Michael Shanks). Everything is complicated by the werewolf that poses as a villager in day while running around killing people at night and the ruthless priest Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) who tears the village apart trying to find it.

For the first ¾ or so, writer David Leslie Johnson (Orphan) makes a compelling mystery story with romantic elements. Director Cathrine Hardwicke (Twilight), who made a dark romance out of the birth of Jesus in The Nativity Story, is in her element.

This makes it more disappointing when the ending just fizzles out.

The earliest known legends of creatures like vampires and werewolves were not of a disease or a mutation. They were a curse. A curse not only to one’s body but to one’s soul.

Obviously, that is a bit intense even for a dark fantasy. Therefore, generally modern vampire and werewolf cinema tends to ignore the spiritual aspect of it all. This is not a perfect choice, seeing as it is sanitizing symbols of evil. Still, it avoids most of the controversy associated with these subjects.

Red Riding Hood wants it both ways. The movie puts in all the parts about lycanthropy being demonic in origin: To the point of showing anyone with the werewolf curse burst into flames when entering the vicinity of a church. Then it ends with no clear explanation for why it suddenly became a minor setback to be a wolf instead of a loss of one’s soul. Obviously God is real (or else there is some scientific explanation for why placing a cross on a steeple makes any nearby werewolf burn) in the Red Riding Hood universe, but he is pretty useless. His “followers”—the only people who actually have a plan for eliminating the wolf—are creepy and violent. In fact, the movie does not have much of a way to keep your life from being ended by a monster other than—stay inside, lock your doors, and if you are bitten practice good self-control. That’s not really a great life message.

Romanticizing damnation seems an interesting choice to make in a movie. Certainly one there should have been a good conclusion for.