“Red Riding Hood” (2011)

Happily, I have so far avoided exposure to the contemporary cult of vampires, be they on the small or big screen.  When I say then that “Red Riding Hood” embraces the “Twilight” aesthetic I’m basically guessing.  Given that the ‘re-imagining’ of the fairy tale as some kind of teen angst fable has a director in common with the first instalment of the neck biting franchise and that it is an absolute piece of melodramatic shit devoid of any redeeming cinematic qualities it’s a safe bet that I’m right.

Actually, I overstate the case.  The premise isn’t necessarily an awful one.  Nor is the cast uniformly appalling.  There are a couple of British veterans on the pay roll trying their best not to look embarrassed.  Julie Christie makes a fair stab of Granny, playing her as a pagan witch.  Gary Oldman goes over the top as only he can as a Spanish Inquisition type preacher, one mighty proud that he had the sand to kill his wife in cold blood when he discovered she was a werewolf.  He chews the scenery far more than the CGI lycanthropes do.

There’s not much to say about anyone else in the film.  In the title part Amanda Seyfried looks at best vacant, an acting standard that her co-stars can but dream of achieving. I guess Virginia Madsen isn’t too bad either as her slut of a mother.

There’s no evidence that the writers know how to construct a story.  The beginning is so confusing that it takes a good quarter of an hour to work out who is who. Catherine Hardwicke directs like she’s a first year Wintec student.  Pointless camera movements, bad framing, jarring editing, anachronistic music, flat lighting and dull costume and set design all add up to a b-grade mess lacking in the kind of atmosphere and tension necessary in even a post modern variation on a horror movie.

It’s an extended, below average MTV video, full of stock types rather than actual characters.  Red Riding Hood’s fellow villagers, for example, are meant to be hard working, hard drinking folk yet all are unaccountably clean and sober, as though they’ve just come straight from central casting, by-passing the make-up room.

And one last thing.  The whole fiasco reflects the usual North America double standard where blood letting and violence is okay just so long as the heroine remains virginal.  No sex please, we’re morons.