Plot
Set in a medieval village that is haunted by a werewolf, a young girl falls for an orphaned woodcutter, much to her family's displeasure.
Release Year: 2011
Rating: 5.1/10 (34,966 voted)
Critic's Score: 29/100
Director:
Catherine Hardwicke
Stars: Amanda Seyfried, Lukas Haas, Gary Oldman
Storyline Valerie (Seyfried) is a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter (Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry the wealthy Henry (Irons). Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter are planning to run away together when they learn that Valerie's older sister has been killed by the werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. For years, the people have maintained an uneasy truce with the beast, offering the creature a monthly animal sacrifice. But under a blood red moon, the wolf has upped the stakes by taking a human life. Hungry for revenge, the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Oldman), to help them kill the wolf. But Solomon's arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them. As the death toll rises with each moon...
Cast: Amanda Seyfried
-
Valerie
Gary Oldman
-
Solomon
Billy Burke
-
Cesaire
Shiloh Fernandez
-
Peter
Max Irons
-
Henry
Virginia Madsen
-
Suzette
Lukas Haas
-
Father Auguste
Julie Christie
-
Grandmother
Shauna Kain
-
Roxanne
Michael Hogan
-
The Reeve
Adrian Holmes
-
Captain
Cole Heppell
-
Claude
Christine Willes
-
Madame Lazar
Michael Shanks
-
Adrien Lazar
Kacey Rohl
-
Prudence
Filming Locations: Canadian Motion Picture Park Studios, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Box Office Details
Budget: $42,000,000
(estimated)
Opening Weekend: $14,005,335
(USA)
(13 March 2011)
(3030 Screens)
Gross: $37,652,565
(USA)
(22 May 2011)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia:
The novelization by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is based on the shooting script rather than the finished film. This is the reason that the novel diverges noticeably from the film.
Goofs:
Factual errors:
In the beginning of the movie there's a scene when Valerie and Peter catch a rabbit. The rabbit is white. The European Rabbit or Common Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is normally grey in color. If it were a hare, European hare (Lepus europaeus), it can be white, but only in winter, in spring and summer its fur gets yellowish-brown to greyish-brown. So, there's actually no way a wild rabbit can be of this perfect white color, unless it's of a domesticated breed.
Quotes: Valerie:
I'll do anything to be with you. Peter:
I thought you'd say that.
User Review
Tries to be too many things, fails at all of them
Rating: 3/10
You'd be hard pressed to find a better example of a film ruined by
trying to be too many things to too many people than Red Riding Hood,
which opens Friday and, by all rights, should close Saturday.
The most obvious audience Hood hopes to attract is fans of the Twilight
film series, snagging the director of the first film, Catherine
Hardwicke, and refashioning the Little Red Riding Hood folk tale into,
in a remarkably halfhearted way, a love triangle between three
extraordinarily uninteresting characters. (If all three had been eaten
by the wolf in the first act, we might have been onto something.)
What's weird about Hood, which inexplicably counts Leonardo DiCaprio as
one of its producers (stick to swimming in icy water, Leo), is that
this romantic angle is not its main thrust. It doesn't have a main
thrust.
In fact, for a supposedly sexier take on a classic folk tale, it's in
desperate need of thrust in general.
It flits around the idea of being a more adult folk tale but never
commits. It throws in a bit of (pretty bad) CGI werewolf attack action
from time to time, but it's nowhere near violent or bloody enough (it's
PG-13) to interest action or horror fans. It has moments of campy fun,
specifically every second Gary Oldman appears as a sinister Cardinal
Richelieu-type character, but other scenes are played ridiculously
straight.
Perhaps the film's biggest mistake — and that's saying something — is
structuring itself like a Scream film. The Big Bad Wolf is indeed a
werewolf, and our sweet little Red (named Valerie, played by Amanda
Seyfried) has to figure out which of her fellow villagers turns into a
beast when the moon is full. Is it her forbidden love, the dull as
dishwater Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), who presumably equates to the
hunter of the folk tale? Or is it the man she's been arranged to marry,
the somehow even duller Henry (Max Irons)? Or is it one the other
remarkably dull villagers? And given how dull Valerie is, who the hell
really cares?
On looks alone, Seyfried perhaps is perfectly cast as Red, considering
Christina Ricci might be a bit too old for the role. Seyfried's
pristine, alabaster skin and enormous eyes give Red just the right
look, but every time she opens her mouth you're begging for that
werewolf to put her out of our misery.
To be fair, no actor could be expected to excel given the cheesy
dialogue and Hardwicke's uninspired direction; solid veterans such as
Virginia Madsen, Julie Christie and Lukas Haas struggle to make an
impression, with Christie holding up the best. As Red's father, Billy
Burke seems more zoned out than James Franco at the Oscars, suggesting
he's only here for one more Twilight connection.
Only Oldman acquits himself well, simply because he treats the film as
the campfest it should have been from the opening credits. He's acting
in an entirely different movie, a Sam Raimi romp like Army of Darkness
or Drag Me to Hell, and Red Riding Hood briefly becomes almost fun
during Oldman's most animated scenes.
The film doesn't even look that great in a technical sense: The
exteriors look fake, all clearly shot on soundstages, and not fake in
an intentional "this is a dreamy heightened reality, because this is a
folk tale" way. They look fake in a "we really suck at our jobs" way.
Red Riding Hood is pretending to be a darker, more adult take on the
folk tale, but it's hardly the first: Neil Jordan mined the territory
in 1984 with the R-rated The Company of Wolves, focusing more on sexual
metaphors and heavy werewolf action. It wasn't great, but at least it
knew what it wanted to be. Red Riding Hood tries to be a little bit of
everything, but ultimately it succeeds only in being a tedious mess.
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