Red Riding Hood

Here is another classic tale retold, but this one is perhaps a bit darker. Classic Little Red Riding Hood is the story of a little girl in a red hooded cloak who walks through the woods by herself to deliver food to her sick grandmother. A wolf meets her on the way, who wants to eat her. The girl tells the wolf where she is going and when she gets to her grandmother's house, the wolf is there, dressed in grandmother's clothing, ready to eat little red riding hood.

Here is the modern day version: Little Red Riding Hood is not so little anymore, making her just Red Riding Hood or Valerie (Amanda Seyfried). She lives in a village called Daggerhorn with her father, Cesaire (Billy Burke) , and mother, Suzette (Virginia Madsen) , and sister, Lucy. She is in love with a woodcutter named Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), but her parents have decided that she is to marry Henry (Max Irons), the son of a wealthy blacksmith. When Peter informs Valerie of this, they decide to run away together when the village siren goes off, alerting everyone that the wolf has claimed another life. The wolf comes to the village once a month and is left an offering of an animal tied up outside to keep it from killing people. After this recent death, the villagers take off to go find the wolf and kill it. They kill a wolf and bring its head back to the village. Then in comes Father Solomon (Gary Oldman), a famous witch hunter. He informs the villagers that they have killed a wolf, but not the werewolf because his own wife was a werewolf. Therefore, if they had killed the correct wolf, it would've turned back into its human form. The villagers still believe that they have killed the right wolf and continue to celebrate until the werewolf comes and attacks the village that night. Now everyone is in fear over which one of the villagers is the werewolf.

I was honestly pretty skeptical of this movie when I first saw the trailer. My first thought was that it wasn't going to be good because Catherine Hardwicke directed it and in my opinion, she did a terrible job on Twilight. Then one day, I read that Leonardo DiCaprio was one of the producers and it peaked my interest because he's been in some good flicks lately. Overall, it was a good movie, but I'm not going to be running out to buy it later on. It's one of those sort of mystery movies where you watch it because you want to know what happens and who the bad guy is, but after finding out, it's kind of pointless to watch again. It is certainly a different twist on this old folktale, so if you're interested in finding out who the werewolf is, by all means, go ahead and see it. I can almost guarantee that you won't figure out who it is until they reveal it at the end. It's pretty unpredictable.