Red Riding Hood is a fairy tale gone thriller. It opened in March of this year and attempted to retell the tale of the Red Riding Hood to adults. With Amanda Seyfried in the lead and a budget topping over $40 million, not a heck lot could go wrong, or so it seemed. Is this a great interpretation of the famous fairy tale? Or does it fall short, becoming one of the many highly anticipated downfalls this movie season, let’s learn.
Story
Red Riding Hood is set in medieval times in a small village haunted by a werewolf. Meanwhile Valerie, a young girl played by Amanda Seyfried, falls in love with a “bad boy” called Peter. The problem being that her parents had set up an arranged marriage with higher-class Henry.
The first plot comes quickly when a new king attempts to tackle the threat by putting the town under siege during the red-moon season. From there the movie becomes an audience’s guessing game, as they try to predict the killer in human form. This is done well by the director by offering plenty of leads and awkward/exciting moments. The writers weren’t scared of making radical things happen, which helped the story progress.
The acting of Red Riding Hood is somewhat off at times. The romantic lines, for example, are so cringe worthy that it becomes even more far-fetched than the characters’ state of mind. Nevertheless the main characters have delivered very decent performances, compensating for the few less-convincing lines in the movie.
Presentation
In the early days of HD releases, movies were very subject to noise generated in darker scenes. Luckily this is fixed because there’re a lot of dark scenes in Red Riding Hood. The picture remains grain-free even during the darkest of times.
The overall level of detail is decent without excelling compared to other recent 1080p movies. The country wheat, during the fire scene, could’ve reflected more details to name an example.
The special effects (especially the werewolf) look amazing and are very convincing. He might be unnatural strong, even for a mythical creature, but has the visuals to match his killing character.
Red Riding Hood offers the next generation of sound, conveniently dubbed: Dolby digital true-HD or DTS-HD. Unfortunately I wasn’t near a set that supports these formats, so I had to fall back on the traditional DTS format. In this mode the movie does well to suggest the werewolf’s whereabouts. They used the 5 channels to great extend, accompanied with a satisfying movie score.
Conclusions
Red Riding Hood is a decent movie with a compelling story that leaves the audience guessing the entire 100-minutes through, helped by strong and brave writing for the most part. The image does well without blowing any senses out of the water, with the sound up there with the best. Taking everything in consideration leaves me with this: Watching Red Riding Hood is entertaining and time well spent, despite the minor issues here and there.
