Filed under: Reviews, Horror, Cinematical
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The classic story of Little Red Riding Hood has taken on many forms and tones over the years, from the finger-wagging moralism of Charles Perrault to the feminist reinterpretation by Angela Carter in her short story “The Company of Wolves.” Catherine Hardwicke’s ‘Red Riding Hood’](Red Riding Hood (2011) - Movie | Moviefone) is the latest film to feature our fresh-faced heroine and her basket full of goodies. Unlike the screen adaptation of Carter’s story by Neil Jordan and even more radical takes on the tale like ‘Freeway,’](Freeway (1996) - Movie | Moviefone) ‘Valerie and Her Week of Wonders’](http://www.moviefone.com/movie/valerie-and-her-week-of-wonders/17737/main) and ‘Hard Candy,’](Hard Candy (2005) - Movie | Moviefone) ‘Red Riding Hood’ stays firmly in the tween fantasy camp where high Ren Faire drama is the order of the day.
In this iteration of the tale, our cape-wearing heroine is Valerie (Amanda Seyfried), whose village of Daggerthorn is terrorized by a werewolf every full moon. When the beast takes Valerie’s older sister as a midnight snack, the villagers call on the notorious werewolf-killer Father Solomon (Gary Oldman) to root out the beast. However, along with his torture devices and heavily armed soldiers, Solomon brings a growing sense of paranoia and fear to the village as he explains to them that the werewolf is probably walking among them as a normal human when it isn’t that time of the month.