Red Riding Hood

Released by: Warner Brothers
Released on: 6/14/2011
Director: Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke
Cast: Catharine Hardwicke
Year: 2011
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The Movie:

Hey wow, the lady who made those awesome Twilight movies and sucked whatever remaining coolness there was right out of the vampire movie has sunk her fangs into fairy tales now. In Hardwicke's defense, 2011's Red Riding Hood probably seemed like a cool idea on paper. Put pretty doe eyed Amanda Seyfried in the lead role and make the big bad wolf into a werewolf… shoot it with some style, come up with some neat set design and interesting costumes, throw some quirky sexual undercurrents into the movie to hit the teenage target demographic where it hurts… yeah that could work. But it didn't.

Set in the rural village of Daggerhorn, the movie introduces us to Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), a dainty blonde waif who is having trouble accepting the fact that her sister has just been murdered by a werewolf that the town had thought they were rid of years ago. Her parents, Cesaire (Billy Burke) and Suzette (Virginia Madsen) withdraw and do their own thing while she decides to find out what's really going on after growing suspicious of what her aged grandmother (Julie Christie) knows but isn't speaking of.

Eventually she's offered a hallowed red cloak by her grandmother and is gallivanting about with a werewolf hunter named Father Solomon (Gary Oldman), who claims that the werewolf is one of their own townspeople. As the movie introduces us to various characters who could be the werewolf - a dreamy woodsman named Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), the hunky son of the local blacksmith named Henry (Max Irons), the creepy old priest named Father Auguste (Lukas Haas), the strange farm worker naned Claude (Cole Heppell), a weird and witchy old woman named Madame Lazar (Christine Willes), or even her smokin' hot BFF named Prudence (Kacey Rohl) - any one of these goofy supporting characters could be a horrible lycanthropic beast and it's up to Valerie and Solomon to figure out who it is before the monster kills again.

Red Riding Hood did get a PG-13 rating for violence and sensuality, and deservedly so. The monster does tend to lay waste to a whole lot of townsfolk before the movie is over and Hardwicke definitely sexualizes her characters in bizarre ways throughout the film - but it plays in the same teen friendly zone that her other movies have played in, so those expecting anything more than surface level depth will be sorely disappointed. Characters are introduced without much rhyme or reason and rarely develop past the point of 'werewolf fodder,' while Seyfried's Valerie zips around town looking spooked and alone, an outsider alienated from the rest of her community who we're supposed to identify with but never given much reason to do so.

Visually the film is pretty solid, even if the werewolf is entirely CGI. There's some nice cinematography here and it looks like a lot of care and attention went into ensuring that the set design and wardrobe had their own interesting vibe. Story-wise, however, there's really not much here to pull you in. An attempt to join the werewolf character with Seyfried's character was probably an attempt to add some backstory to this whole mess, but it doesn't work. Throw in some love triangle subplots, a boneheaded dream sequence to try and tie the movie into the fairy tale which inspired it, some telepathic communication and a whole lot of horribly stinky dialogue and it's easy to see how the bad far, far, far outweigh the good here. The whole thing winds up an amazingly predictable and brainless film, truly an exercise in style over substance and nothing more.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Warner Brothers offer up Red Riding Hood in an AVC encoded 2.40.1 high definition widescreen transfer that looks pretty much as good as you'd expect a brand spankin' new movie like this to look. The transfer offers up gorgeous detail, fantastic color reproduction and strong black levels without any print damage to note. Colors have been tweaked a lot here to get a certain mood going, so don't expect everything to look quite natural, but that's obviously been done on purpose. There's a little bit of crush in some of the darker scenes but aside from that, things look very good here.

The only lossless audio option on the disc is an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, though standard Dolby Digital 5.1Surround Sound tracks are provided in French, Spanish and Portuguese with optional subtitles provided in those very same languages. What's to say here… the movie sounds great. The score is spread out perfectly, there's constant surround usage and no problems at all with hiss or distortion or bad levels. It really sounds quite perfect.

The biggest extra on the disc is Secrets Behind The Red Hood, which is basically a picture in picture running commentary track with Hardwicke and cast members Amanda Seyfried, Shiloh Fernandez and Max Irons, most of whom have a sort of 'deer in the headlights' vibe to them and appear unusually awkward here as they discuss the movie. All involved try to tell some interesting stories about working on the picture but Hardwicke goes off topic a lot which makes it tough and no one seems to be concentrating much on the task at hand. Seyfried frequently comes off as a bit of a goof, noting her objection to a CGI horse being injured in the movie…?

Aside from that, there's a thirty five minute featurette entitled Behind The Story that includes a lot of interviews with those who participated in the PiP track in addition to some behind the scenes footage. Broken up into seven parts, it'll give you some insight into what went into making this movie if you're looking for more of that, but it won't change your opinion of it. Neither will the inclusion of Hardwicke's extended cut of the film, which runs a whole thirty-four seconds longer than the theatrical version and which includes a different ending.

Rounding out the extras are a three minute gag reel, four minutes of deleted scenes, a couple of music videos, animated menus and chapter stops. All of the extras on the Blu-ray disc are in HD. Also included inside the packaging as a standard DVD and digital copy of the film.

The Final Word:

A fairly awful film in pretty much ever regard, Red Riding Hood does look and sound very good on Blu-ray. The movie itself features some nice production values and slick visuals but fails to ever build up the substance or tension needed to really pull you in. High five to Warner Brothers for making it look as nice as it does though.