This trailer for Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood, features spectacular scenery and a few mystical elements, but it feels too cutting-edge and romantic, following the style of Twilight, to fit my view of this epic folk tale.
I had hoped that the movie would offer a more dreadful, rougher and cruder atmosphere, more in the line of the earlier versions of the fairy tale, rather than to loosely follow the modern adaptations of it.
Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood takes place in Daggerhorn, a medieval village haunted by a bloodthirsty werewolf. In the village we find Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), a beautiful young woman who falls in love with the orphan wood cutter Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), something that her parents are against since they have arranged for her to marry the wealthy lad Henry (Max Irons).
As Valerie and Peter, in fear of losing each other, plans to run way the werewolf breach the long-lasting truce with the villagers and under a blood red moon, the beast takes a human life – Valerie’s sister. Hungry for revenge, the people in the village send for the famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Gary Oldman), in hopes that he can take down the beast for them.
Panic grips the village as more villagers are slain with each new moon Father Solomon reveals that the beast takes human form by day and that it could be anyone in the village. Soon Valerie discovers that she has an uncanny connection to the werewolf, which draws them together, making her both a suspect and bait . . .
I think this sounds more like a love drama, with a vicious werewolf thrown in, than a gritty suspenseful horror story. Nonetheless, there’s three reasons to why I will go and see this – Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried and a werewolf!
How about you, will you go and see Red Riding Hood as it howls into the theaters on March 2?
Box of Horror 