Red Riding Hood

The Synopsis
Valarie (Amanda Seyfried) lives in a village that is haunted each month by a werewolf. This werewolf, the town soon begins to realise could only be one of them. Valarie has to find out who this wolf is, could it be her secret love Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), the man that she is betrothed to Henry (Max Irons) or even her own Grandmother (Julie Christie).

The Review
Okay, so to say I've been excited about seeing this one would be a bit of an understatement. The idea around the film caught my eye and then to top it all off Amanda Seyfried was starring in it, Catherine Hardwicke was directing it and Leonardo Di Caprio was a producer. How could it possibly be anything other than amazing?

I think that there may be the reason for my not actually enjoying it as much as I hoped. My standards were unbelievably high and although it was an entertaining and highly competent film, there were just a few things that forced it to fall short of how great it could have been.

Let's start off with the things I did like. The iconic images from the fairy tale were portrayed in amazing light throughout the film. For any of you who have seen the trailer, you might remember the shot of Valarie walking up a snow filled mountain a long trail of red cloak blowing behind her. The magnificent red on white imagery was a token part all the way through as you can see in the above picture. It made me feel excited about what the film had to offer, like seeing a fairy tale shown with some level of reality (well, as real as you can get when your talking about a village being terrorised by a werewolf).

I also loved how true it was to the fairy tale whilst completely standing out as it's own piece. It kept the memorable scenes of the travelling to Grandma's with a basket and red cloak and managed to get away with using the "Grandmother, what big eyes you have" sequence without losing the integrity of the film which was quite a feat. There was one particular moment close to the end where they may have stretched the bounds of reality a little too much in order to accommodate the fairy tale but all in all, an awesome job.

Okay, here are the bits that forced me to drop a face off my overall score. As important as the whole "Whodunnit" plot was to the story, I fear they may have gone a little overboard. Due to absolutely everyone being a possible murderer it was really hard for me to form any kind of attachment to the characters or their relationships with each other. This left me therefore uncomfortable throughout the film and not really able to settle on any particular character. It caused a detachment that I don't think they intended to make.

Also the ending was a little strange and although Film-Buddy-Kezia seemed to approve of it, I was on the fence. Probably due to the fact that I had no involvement with the film by the end. That whole premise unfortunately just threw the quality of the film slightly out of whack but other than that, it was an enjoyable film that I would see again now I am aware of what happens. I might actually enjoy it a lot better that way.

Three faces from me.