Release Date: June 14, 2011
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 100 minutes

Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) directs a fantasy thriller that puts a haunting twist on the classic fairy tale. For years the villagers of Daggerhorn have maintained an uneasy truce with a werewolf – but the beast changes the stakes by killing the older sister of beautiful young Valerie (Amanda Seyfried). Promised in marriage to one man but in love with another, Valerie has her life dramatically affected yet again by the creature’s bloody actions. When a werewolf hunter warns that the beast takes human form by day and walks among them, panic sets in as the death toll rises. And Valerie learns she has a unique connection to the wolf that inexorably draws them together, making her both suspect…and bait. Gary Oldman, Billie Burke, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas and Julie Christie also star.

Red Riding Hood is a great “Who Done It?” murder mystery, not a horror as it may have been marketed to be. There’s also a bit of a romance, a love triangle but it failed to peak my main interest, given all that is going on in this little community what with a werewolf killing the residents one by one. It’s a much more exhilarating take on the classic tale compared to other spins of the tale that I have seen. I say this because this film is dark and creepy and just sexy enough not to distract from the mystery at hand. It will have you on your toes, thinking about who the killer is at every moment.

At the same time, this film had the potential to be so much more but the pacing is just a bit too slow to really take it to a higher level. Plus, there was not nearly enough of Gary Oldman as I anticipated. But if you go in with certain expectations of just having fun with it while not being completely blown away by the characters (most of which do not have as much depth as I anticipated, but that could have been part of the “mystery” strategy I guess), dialogue, and the pacing of the story in each scene, there’s something to enjoy here. Plus, there’s just enough gore for the people who don’t like it and the people who don’t mind.

Of course, it is best to watch with the latest version of iTunes and in full screen mode. If you are doing other things on your laptop while watching the movie, chances are, there will be a slight delay between the audio and the visuals because of the memory you are eating up. If you’ve got the right cord to hook your laptop to your TV to watch the film, this is the perfect movie to watch on a big screen television. The bigger, the better as the cinematography for this film is extraordinary and reason alone to watch! So make sure to rent or buy Red Riding Hood today so you can find out who the wolf is that’s been killing all of the residents and what becomes of that wolf in this updated classic.

Red Riding Hood is available now! Watch it your way On Demand and For Download.