Horrorshow: Red Riding Hood

I... I'm not sure this counts.

Just to be clear: I'm not the one who classified this as a horror movie. I found it at the library with a little orange sticker on the DVD case, which means the library considers it to be either a horror film or an animated feature. And, considering how flat everyone's faces are, there's NO WAY anyone can call this animated.

ZING!

*ahem*

Sorry about that.

Right from the movie poster, we're off to a bad start. See, I happened to know going into this movie that Gary Oldman had a role. Looking at the poster, I see Amanda Seyfried and two pretty boys with anachronistically spiked hair. No Gary Oldman.

Look, movie, when you have Gary Oldman in your movie, you need to make sure people can see your Gary Oldman. Failure to do so is just a poor use of your Gary Oldman. I hope you learned your lesson.

Okay, so this movie was pretty much a failure on all fronts, but most prominently as an adaptation of the Red Riding Hood fable. The original story is FULL of symbolism about, like, adolescence and innocence and stuff. The movie doesn't even ATTEMPT to reference the metaphorical weight of the original. Rather, they take all the visual elements of the fairy tale and hammer them into a plot where they just do not belong. I mean, the whole "Grandma, what big teeth you have" exchange takes place in a dream - meaning, frankly, that it has no influence on the actual plot.

There is exactly one scene which I thought looked good - At one point, High Inquisitor Oldman decides Amanda Seyfried's character (who is NOT named Red and, therefore, I don't care what her name is) would make good bait for the werewolf, so he parades her around in the village square and places an iron wolf mask on her face. We get a few shots of Seyfried's friends coming around and accusing her of being a witch, all shot through the eye sockets of the mask. The effect is claustrophobic, oppressive. I actually said, out loud, while watching the movie, "Okay, THAT was pretty good."

Other than that, you just have a bland teenage romance that encourages young girls to disobey their parents and go off with the first boy they fall in love with who might literally eat their faces off. Which... is actually pretty scary, but not in the way the movie intended.