Red Riding Hood

A young girl is all alone in Rome after her father (a politician) passes away. When her grandmother comes to take her away ,the girl has other plans. Little does granny know, but the girl is a vigilante who fights injustice at night in a red riding hood.

First, let me say this: 92 minutes, my eye! It felt like I was there for three hours suffering through this. How many ways can I spell out boring? Despite watching this with a group of friends (including three lovely ladies) I just couldn't wait for it to be over.

Now, granted, some death scenes were alright. The liquor bottle in the face, the use of peanut butter to cause an allergic reaction. Nice ideas. And as a philosopher, I loved the idea of using a Kant book to alert authorities to your whereabouts. But beyond that, I think this film was lacking.

First, the thought of a young girl being this self-sufficient is absurd. Maybe Punky Brewster could do it, but in Rome? This made the rest sort of hard to believe. And the crimes she gets vengeance for -- I think she's a little bit over-reacting. I've already commented on the pacing, but it bears repeating.

I disliked the advertising. We got a picture of a sexy, sassy vixen on a bike... and the film had a girl who was maybe 12 at most. The wolf shows up, but really has nothing to do with the film, or at least not enough to be really enjoyable. The red riding hood theme was very nice (I'm a collector of red riding hood paintings myself) but I think it was simply not well presented.

So we have decent deaths, slow plot, respectable acting... all in all nothing beyond mediocrity (though, I suppose, certainly not complete rubbish). I wouldn't recommend this one to you -- I don't ever want to see it again if I can help it. But if your goal is to watch the worst and most boring horror films ever made, you could do worse than this one.

This movie is plain and simple an "okay" movie. It's nothing special, but nothing terrible, furthermore it succeeds in places, and drastically fails in others. For starters I'll talk about the main character "Jenny". I could easily see from the beginning of the movie, what the desired effect for the character was, it was the clichéd innocent little girl with an evil twist. And to be honest I got bored with it. I can't tell whether the girls acting was terrible or whether it was the character. I felt no emotion towards any other characters and it can be seen that little time was spent on creating them. The character of Jennys tutor, "Tom" was played by a relatively unknown actor and wasn't that bad, just too simplistic. The grandmother was the only good acting in the film to be honest. Don't even get me started on the character of "George". George is a six foot tall monster that follows Jenny as she does her duty. I think George was created to add some form of horror and mystery into an otherwise dull plot. The morals shown by the main protagonist are so corrupt and predictable, it made me ask the question. "If this girl is so intelligent and all knowing why does she succumb to the things she does?" It made no sense, the director obviously just wanted to add some moral value into the flick, trying to get a reaction, which failed. Is this movie a black comedy, well, it tries to be. One good thing Is the placement of the repetitive music, yes some music was played over and over, but they were used brilliantly. The direction wasn't terrible either. It could have been something great with a better lead actor, and better scriptwriting. All in all 6/10.

Ahh...Assonitis. Just when you thought the producer of fine Italian independent films such as Tentacels, The Visitor, and Beyond The Door was maybe retired or deceased. No, not yet. He's back with another classic (without John Huston) that proves he still has what it takes to produce the worst looking films ever to come out of Italy. I assume that's because he fires anybody with talent about halfway through the production as with James Cameron on Pirahna 2 or Lucio Fulci's great D.P. Sergio Salvati on this picture. Poor Salvati probably said "look here Assonitis! every shot hand-held no good." And i bet Assonitis said "you fired! hand-hold OK because we shoot in video!" Seriously, he should have just called this Beyond The Door 4 because if you've seen those sequels it makes all the sense in the world.

Red Riding Hood is about a little girl named Jenny (Susanna Satta) who has been abandoned by her mother and has come up with quite a warped sense of values. Her father was a politician who was assassinated by a wacko of some sort. Jenny takes his death as an abandonment on his part and her mother abandons her for some guy while they live in Italy, which adds to her confusion and insanity.

Jenny, along with her friend George, have become somewhat of vigilantes, punishing common thieves, hit and runners and even those who are morally bankrupt by torturing and killing them. By the way, she believes George is her puppy that is all grown up.. to over 6 ft. tall and rides a bicycle and wears a mask.

Eventually, Jenny's grandmother, Rose (Kathleen Archebald) comes to Italy to take her back to New York. The demented little girl wants nothing to change in her life, as her mother left behind lots of cash and credit cards with an unlimited balance.

Jenny's take on her life is that of the old nursery rhyme, Little Red Riding Hood, hence the name of the movie, but it is taken from the wolf's point of view. This little girl is littering up the wolf's forest and insults the size of his ears and eyes, etc. So I suppose George is meant to be the wolf.

The movie is halfway original I suppose, but Susanna's acting is a bit over the top for me and a little unbelievable. Plus, I do not think anyone would really fear for their life from a little girl, even if she does have a knife (don't want to give away too much here). The plot twists are a little different, which is good but the special effects could have used a little work. Obvious rubber props used for body parts, and little things like that rubbed me the wrong way. This was not as good as I expected. 5/10

This is a retelling of the classic fairytale. Here, Little Red Riding Hood is an obnoxious spoiled brat who is best friends with "the Wolf" (a mysterious figure with a cap and wolf mask, who she believes is her, well, dog.) Instead of venturing out to visit Grandma, they live with her keep her captive, torturing her. Think "Freeway" meets "Misery." I really wanted to love this movie, but I couldn't because the lead actress was so terrible and obnoxious, performing as if she were in a junior high school play. I'm not sure if the ending is a joke that misfired, but I didn't think it was amusing. If you like twisted fairy tales, you probably want to check this out, but be warned, it can get very grating at times.