Mar 12, 2011

Movie Review--Red Riding Hood

The only reason why I became interested in this movie was because I read a similar storyline in Debbie Viguie's Scarlet Moon, years ago and loved it. So I did read the book version of this, which left out the last chapter which was extremely annoying. But I still gave the movie a try.

Right away I felt like it was another Twilight movie, and I even expected that in some ways, but wow. It was really that bad in similarities. Catherine must have an obsession with shots of the woods, because the beginning felt exactly like Twilight. I was wondering if she took that footage and used it anyway!

Billy Burke back as the dad was another surprise, but nothing horrid. He's not a bad actor, I have nothing against him, it just marks this as a Twilight feature.

Another thing was Shiloh Fernandez's hair. Don't get me wrong, he's very handsome, much better than Edward...er Robert. But his hairstyle soooooo made me think of Edward. And I know it's not that big a deal, but it was just a lot of little things about the movie that screamed Twilight that annoyed me.

Otherwise the movie was still rather good. It was like the book a lot, except it starts at the point where Valerie's sister is found dead, so it made things move rather quickly. The actual ending was pretty surprising too! Totally threw out my theories I developed from the books! I mean it almost seemed like it came out of left field, but still surprises like that can be nice. It was explained in a believable way, there just wasn't any hints. (okay, there was one, but it wasn't done exceptionally well IMO) You know? Sometimes you except to see clues after the big reveal that makes you say, "oh yeah!". But that wasn't there.

Basically the movie left me feeling blah. Eh. Nothing overtly special. Glad I paid the early admission $5 to see it. It's definitely not one I will have to own or wait agonizingly for the DVD. So to me it did reek a little too much of Twilight to be fully enjoyable, but the non Twilight parts were entertaining. There was a little bit here and there that came from the original fairytale that made it enjoyable for me at those parts. Although, just as I was thinking it wasn't that bad of a movie, the final scene was just way too cheesy for my liking that I was rolling my eyes.

Pretty much everyone walked out of the theater agreeing that it was Twilight but focusing on werewolves.