Red Riding Hood (2011) Review: Twilightized Adaptation

Amanda Seyfried looks great and Gary Oldman delivers in every frame he’s in, but that’s the only thing good in this adaptation of a classic tale. Red Riding Hood hovers between romance and horror without really giving anything for you to be interested in.

The two leading men competing for her affections uninterestedly brood their way throughout the movie, with Max Irons completely bland and wooden.

The supposed whodunit mystery that’s set up in the film is trampled on by the paranoid Father Solomon who’s more concerned with terrorizing the people with a metal elephant rather than getting rid of the problem of the village.

The set is striking but with perfectly coiffed people wearing summer clothes, it looked more like a place taken out of Disneyland.

Suspense is built through close-ups, then horror comes with a wolf who’s nothing more than a big mutt in glorious CGI.

The grandmother (Julie Christie) is an interesting red herring, but the movie is more concerned with Valerie’s troubled love life more than anything else, showcasing woes and erotic undertones. But it isn’t convincing as an angst-filled romance or a fantasy-horror-thriller, so it turns into a mediocre twist to a classic tale.

This Red Riding Hood is a Twilight version of the Grimm’s fairytale. There’s forbidden love, a teenage girl caught between two brooding guys, a supernatural element, and the same actor portraying the Dad.  If Twilight does nothing for you, this won’t either.